cal and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end [ 3].” Linking, bridging, or creating connections is now seen as more fundamental to designing than conceptualization and creation: “Making sense of how people live and behave, and drawing insights from those observations has always been at the heart of what the best designers do. They visualise and give life to radical ideas and create connections that can lead to meaningful change [ 4].”

What can go wrong when designing, and why? The fundamental error is fetish fixation: to sketch only things, not what connects those things to good experiences and outcomes. To show the connections between craft design elements and human value elements, we need to sketch both and then sketch the connections between them. Without all three sketches, we cannot properly explore the relationship between feature and interaction alternatives (alternative means to some end) and design purpose (the end of designing). HCI and interaction design have to make one more step to design for connecting. We sketch and prototype design “means” very well, either as various artifact representations (e.g., screen mockups, dialogue storyboards) or as interaction representations (e.g., scenarios). This resulting second focus on storytelling marks out contemporary design [ 5]. However, video envisionment, dramatic scenarios, body storming, and other forms of experience prototyping still focus largely on means. Experience is not always an end

in itself; it can be, but great experiences always result in enduring value. In much usage, experiences are largely means to an end. Thus, the most challenging game interactions can be very unpleasant and frustrating, but completing the last mission at veteran level after a week’s struggle can be immensely satisfying. Value here lies in achievement—this is so with most work and many leisure applications of computing.

Designing to connect requires sketching of ( 1) envisaged artifacts, ( 2) desired outcomes and ( 3) their interconnection in means-end chains. We base sketches of artifacts on craft and technical possibilities, extended by creativity, and we base sketches of outcomes on knowledge of what people find worthwhile—great experiences and great achievements. Here we sketch happy endings without reference to technologies used to get there. We sketch connections by associating crafted design elements (materials, features, qualities) with human value elements (experiences, outcomes).

Our ability to sketch or prototype interaction design elements is well developed, as is our ability to sketch or prototype user experiences. To see how to communicate happy endings, we need only look to advertising, which has been associating happy outcomes with product and service purchases for well over a century. We should not bring any distaste of advertising with us here. What we must do is reject the dishonest manipulation behind false associations of product attributes and human outcomes, but we can and should learn about how these outcomes are presented in advertising. We

can take advantage of this expertise in communicating happy endings but can reappropriate this into ethical design processes that credibly and demonstrably deliver on claimed associations between design and value elements.

Keep the sketches, keep the prototypes, borrow advertising’s heart-tugging media techniques, but proceed ethically, rationally, and demonstrably in connecting them all. Unlike the advertiser with a brief to sell, even at the expense of the truth, designers have a brief to deliver on design purpose without hiding from the truth. A fundamental question that follows here is: How can we sketch hoped-for connections between people and technology?

[ 3] Cox, G., Review of Creativity in Business: Building on the UK’s strengths. December 2, 2005. <http://www. hm-treasury.gov.uk/ independent_reviews/ cox_review/coxreview_ index.cfm>. Accessed April 13, 2008.

[ 4] Crawley, A. “Model Behaviour” RSA eJournal, December 2007. <http://www.rsa. org.uk/journal/article. asp?articleID=1223>. Accessed April 13, 2008.

Sketching and Mapping Connections Between People and Technologies We can sketch explicit connections by adapting techniques used in advertising and marketing, which ladder from product attributes to the happy endings of consumer values. I call the resulting connection sketch of intersecting means-ends chains a “worth map.” As an illustration, an example is now developed for a U.K. home climate-control system. In the U.K. home climate controllers mostly keep homes warm rather than cool. We call them “central heating controllers.” They are notoriously difficult to use [ 6] and have been used as an illustration of how redesign can improve usability [ 7]. Jenson’s redesign focuses on physical and perceptual interaction, without questioning whether the value of a heating controller is solely about a British fixation on saving money, which

[ 5] Brown, T., “Strategy
by Design,” Fast
Company, June
2005. < www.ideo.
com/pdf/FastCo-
StrategyByDesign
( TimBrown).pdf>.
Accessed April 13,
2008.

[ 6] Blackwell, A.F. “End User Developers at Home,” CACM 47, no. 9 (2004): 65-66.

[ 7] Jenson, S. The Simplicity Shift: Innovative Design Tactics in a Corporate World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.