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Subject:RE: Are you using personas? (take II) From:John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 Jan 2003 16:14:03 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, Alan [mailto:Alan -dot- Miller -at- prometric -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 3:16 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Are you using personas? (take II)
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
:-{).
------Response Message ----
Alan...actually, until this discussion, I did not believe in their use. To
me, they were for gaming.
However...they are similar to what I've been using as the target of my
documentation. I wasn't kidding when I said I refer to my reader as Igor,
since many of the people who work here, including my boss, are Russian.
To the people here that I talk to to get information, it is real easy to
visualize the type of person who would be on the graveyard shift, with
nobody to talk to, here only a week, and experiencing critical or major
network errors.
In fact, it's to the point that when I ask a developer "What would Igor do
in this situation?", they now know exactly what type of reader I'm writing
for.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
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