Strange Loop

Applying Principles of Stage Magic to User Experience

Stage magicians have been astonishing and delighting their audiences for years. But there is a surprising amount of repeatable principles behind the art of illusion. The bulk of the actual work in a practiced stage act is more about directing the audience's attention and expectations. Your application can also benefit from the principled application of practices such as direction/misdirection and not letting your users see your secret preparations and many others. By consistent application of these rules you can help fulfill Arthur C. Clarke's vision that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Danno Ferrin

Intelligent Software Solutions, Inc.

Danno Ferrin is a Component Lead Engineer at Intelligent Software Solutions, a government contractor that is quite a change of pace from the startups he previously worked at. His career predates the dot-com meltdown and he still bears the scars from getting JavaScript to work properly in Netscape 3 and 4 simultaneously and keeping the NetDynamics server from crashing. In his spare time he works on various open source projects, such as the Groovy programming language and the Griffon application framework. He also is a founder of the Griffon project.