Mood Boards as a Communication Medium
Creators: name: McDonagh, Deana
name: Ruecker, Stan
name: Subramaniam, Karthik
Publisher: name: unknown
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Universal design
subject: Visual communication
subject: Design

description: Mood boards are a collection of images that support design activities. They are a standard tool in the designer's toolbox, often used for the design team to explore the problem being solved, the user context and a means of setting the aesthetic tone for the project. The content of mood boards can vary widely, from colour ideas to abstract patterns to representational diagrams and photographs. Their mode of operation, however, is often static, with images pinned to a board, or haphazardly interactive, with people moving items around, whether physically or digitally. 

In this paper, we propose that the next logical step in the progression of mood boards is for them to adopt the principles of rich-prospect browsing, where the various items are associated with metadata to allow the designer and client to dynamically reorganise the items in the board. These dynamic forms of representation provide an opportunity for serendipitous combination that provide insight or inspiration, whether through similarities or differences, metaphor by juxtaposition, or other means. Such a display also offers affordances for more balanced collections, where the existence of the metadata can encourage the people searching for items to assemble equal numbers for each value.

Perhaps most importantly, a more dynamic version of mood board can potentially serve as an enhanced version of communication, especially with people who tend to think with images. In particular, given the current shift in demographics, as people are living longer and no longer perceive having a disability as a barrier to a high quality of life, mood boards offer a research tool to elicit needs and aspirations from individuals who may otherwise be overlooked if they are unable to communicate through more traditional means such as text and words.

In this project, we deal with the use of the mood board, not in the initial collection of images, but in the subdivision, grouping, and relationship among images.
description: Mood boards are a collection of images that support design activities. They are a standard tool in the designer's toolbox, often used for the design team to explore the problem being solved, the user context and a means of setting the aesthetic tone for the project. The content of mood boards can vary widely, from colour ideas to abstract patterns to representational diagrams and photographs. Their mode of operation, however, is often static, with images pinned to a board, or haphazardly interactive, with people moving items around, whether physically or digitally. In this paper, we propose that the next logical step in the progression of mood boards is for them to adopt the principles of rich-prospect browsing, where the various items are associated with metadata to allow the designer and client to dynamically reorganise the items in the board. These dynamic forms of representation provide an opportunity for serendipitous combination that provide insight or inspiration, whether through similarities or differences, metaphor by juxtaposition, or other means. Such a display also offers affordances for more balanced collections, where the existence of the metadata can encourage the people searching for items to assemble equal numbers for each value. Perhaps most importantly, a more dynamic version of mood board can potentially serve as an enhanced version of communication, especially with people who tend to think with images. In particular, given the current shift in demographics, as people are living longer and no longer perceive having a disability as a barrier to a high quality of life, mood boards offer a research tool to elicit needs and aspirations from individuals who may otherwise be overlooked if they are unable to communicate through more traditional means such as text and words. In this project, we deal with the use of the mood board, not in the initial collection of images, but in the subdivision, grouping, and relationship among images.