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Subject:RE: Are you using personas? (take II) From:"Miller, Alan" <Alan -dot- Miller -at- prometric -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 Jan 2003 15:16:28 -0500
Until this thread, I had not heard of "personas" either. At least not in this usage.
>From what I'm reading here, Geoff, this is just the same old analysis tools with the serial numbers filed off, a new coat of paint, and a different name. I've been doing Needs, Job, and Task analyses for <mumble, mumble> years, and I see nothing new here, just plain old common sense. Looks like somebody found a way to tell a bunch of pigeons... I mean Tech writers... what they already knew and get them to pay for it. Wish I'd thought of it :-{).
Al Miller
"Chief Documentation Curmudgeon"
Prometric, Inc., a part of The Thomson Corporation
Baltimore, Maryland
Everything is funny as long as it happens to someone else.
-- Will Rogers
-----Original Message-----
From: Hart, Geoff [mailto:Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 2:22 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Are you using personas? (take II)
Keith Cronin wonders: <<Is there some way in which the use of "personas"
differs from determining who your audience is?>>
Yup. See my previous post in this thread. Audience analysis tells you who
they are. Task analysis tells you what they want to do. Personas tell you
how they must or should do it, and thus tell you how to design your
interface and your documentation. Lots of similarities, but because personas
focus on the how and why, they're a more powerful design tool than audience
analysis or task analysis.
<<New slogan: I put the "ech" in tech writing.>>
<vbg> Now if we could only find someone to put the "high" back in... <g>
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful
than a life spent doing nothing."--George Bernard Shaw
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