RE: Are you using personas? (Take III)

["Van Laan, Krista" <KVanlaan -at- verisign -dot- com>]

Geoff Hart says:
> 
> Why would you create a persona for women? You and I have 
> different plumbing,
> but when it comes to using the software, we use the same 
> hands to control
> the same keyboard and the same mouse. It's the role that's 
> important, and
> unless you want to get into a long and heated argument about gender, I
> suspect you're best off not creating a "female" role in your list of
> personas. Similarly, if your focus is the English interface, 
> then you don't
> need an "international" persona either. The interface is the same for
> everyone.

OK, I see your point and it makes sense, but at the presentation level,
I'm assuming that a male/female breakdown similar to reality makes sense. 
After all, we're humanizing these users and giving them names, 
a photograph and title and so on. I theoretically could make five
personas and make all five of them female if I wanted to, but since that is
not the
typical breakdown, it would probably look false. Also, I would think
an international persona would make sense because they share a bunch
of common needs and characteristics. So maybe that persona would
be someone who speaks really good English but it is not his or her native
language,
objects because our UI is not offered in multiple languages,
and has a hard time calling his account representative because of
time differences. Or something. 

<snip>
> 
> Part of the confusion I'm seeing in this discussion is that people are
> equating personas with demographic information, and as the 
> examples I've
> shown suggest, the really important thing is what those 
> people are trying to
> accomplish not who they are. 

Yes, that's true. But the whole "personas" concept makes it important
to give the person a name and face a job title once you've identified
their needs. In the ways I've seen it done, you decide first what 
your typical user(s) is, then what
they are trying to accomplish. It can be something like "Help
telecommunications
operators in Asia set up wireless networks" or "Answer my customer's
questions
when they call in with problems" or "Manage network components remotely."
You then give each of them a title, name, etc. I think I'll approach it from
your
direction and see if it comes together better for me, because going at it
in that direction was what made it seem large and unmanageable.

<snip again>

> <<What's the right number -- are six too many and one too few?>>
> 
> The right number, unfortunately, is as many as you need. 
> Think of personas
> in terms of the tasks that people want to accomplish, and 
> what is required
> before they can perform a task, and it'll be clearer what you 
> need to do.
> 

Makes sense. When it's done by identifying a single persona 
who has many tasks and responsibilities, you end up identifying 
maybe a salesperson persona, an account rep persona, an installer 
persona, a programmer persona, a network administrator persona,
with all the various issues they have to deal with. Very broad and
hard to pin down what you're doing for each. But the 
task-based approach sounds like a better way to break it down, to
make sure everything's covered. Then you can group together some of
those tasks to be accomplished by the same persona.

 Thanks,

 Krista

================================================
Krista Van Laan
Director of Technical Communications, Engineering   
VeriSign, Inc.  http://www.verisign.com
487 E. Middlefield Rd.    Mountain View, CA 94043    
tel: (650) 426-5158    fax: (650) 426-5195 

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