While at the IEEE/PCS conference last week, I met two (count ‘em, two!) professors of technical communication who are also magicians. I mean actual card-carrying magicians, the kind that can be sitting around a table and suddenly start performing amazing tricks with pennies.

And then I saw this post over at Orange Cone, Mike Kuniavsky’s blog, about using magic as a metaphor for user interaction. He even posted his slides and notes from a recent talk. He says:

“I believe magic as a metaphor is an incredibly rich vein that can be mined for interesting and familiar user experience design tropes.”

This was a new way of looking at things for me, definitely worth a look for anyone interested in improving user experience. I’ll be watching for more…