In 1992, in response to a rapidly consolidating software industry, Cooper began consulting with other companies, helping them design their applications to be more user friendly. Within a few years, Alan Cooper had begun to articulate some of his basic design principles. With his clients, he championed a design methodology that puts the users’ needs first. Cooper interviewed the users of his client's products and discovered the common threads that made these people happy. Born of this practice was the use of "personas" as design tools. Cooper preached his vision in two books. His ideas helped to drive the user experience movement and define the craft that would come to be called “interaction design.”