RE: Are you using personas? (take II)

["Miller, Alan" <Alan -dot- Miller -at- prometric -dot- com>]

John, I can't dispute the utility of the technique. I've been using it since, uhm, well back in the last century <G>. When I was in the business of training technical experts to be trainers and/or writers, one of the techniques I taught was to write as though you were explaining the topic to someone you knew, who would be using the manual; and to instruct to selected students in the class, who might be problematic.
 
What I can't see any particular utility to is spending time (and  money) creating a fiction. Just pick out someone who fits and get on with it. Of course, if someone wants to _pay_ me to do it....
 
Al Miller
"Chief Documentation Curmudgeon"
Prometric, a part of The Thomson Corporation
Baltimore, Maryland
 
Everything is funny as long as it happens to someone else. 
          -- Will Rogers 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: John Posada [mailto:JPosada -at- book -dot- com] 
	Sent: Thu 1/30/2003 4:14 PM 
	To: Miller, Alan; TECHWR-L 
	Cc: 
	Subject: RE: Are you using personas? (take II)
	

	<snip>

	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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