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Subject:RE: Are you using personas? From:Alan Bucher <bucherino -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 Jan 2003 11:49:12 -0800 (PST)
kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com wrote:
>Is there some way in which the use of "personas" differs from
>determining who your audience is? That's always been *my* first
>step, but I never had a cool name for it. Or is there something
>more to it?
It goes beyond that. A persona is a profile of an actual person.
You give him or her a name, a history, goals, and an attitude.
Here are a couple of abbreviated examples:
"Pam is 23 and from New York. She's new to her job, but she
wants to do the best she can. She's not very technical, and is
sometimes overwhelmed by technical jargon. But once she learns
how to do something, she quickly becomes an expert at it."
"Justin is 38 and a father of two. He's been doing this job for
15 year and knows it inside and out. He'll use new applications,
but hates when they get in his way. He wants to get in, do his
job, and then go home to have dinner with his family."
So now you write some doc and evaluate it against your personas.
Does your doc satifsy a Pam? (Does it explain how to do things
in plain, clear language?) Does your doc satisfy a Justin?
(Does it provide a business expert with enough information to
quickly map his experience to the software tasks?)
I've worked on projects where we had 6-10 personas. Even
attached photos to them to give them faces, then hung them on
the walls! It was like the customer was always watching. :)
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