> I've looked at the example from Chopsticker 4-5 times (it was posted > in another previous thread as well) and I've never had the attention > span to read the whole thing.
I strongly believe that a persona *requires* narrative -- much of a persona's power lies in its ability to create a sense of character, and story/narrative is the best (perhaps only?) way to achieve that. Narrative takes up more space than a few bulleted lists. Also, I'm not surprised you haven't read the whole thing. I react similarly to personas from projects I'm not involved in. IMHO, that's because the information they contain isn't important to us at the time. I've found that 2 pages and maximum 1000 words is a good length to shoot for. People actively involved in the project find it an easy length to read. > Also, how relevant is the information? What design decision would you > make based on the following information from the persona? *Almost* every piece of information in that persona was useful to the design team. To take your example... > "He doesn't suffer fools, just as he won't put up with anything that > stands in the way of getting his job done." That statement encapsulated a couple of important insights that were elaborated in the next paragraph. The people represented by Timothy: - Have no patience for anything considered "extraneous". Stick to the core, cut to the chase, or you'll lose them forever. (One could argue that everybody feels that way, but we were stressing that Timothy feels it to a much higher degree than usual.) - Send most of their documents just before leaving for home each day. They're in a hurry and want to leave. Don't stand in their way or they'll get *very* pissed off. "Suffering fools" and "standing in his way" actually became mantras for us as we considered various design strategies. So we got some mileage out of that particular statement. > If I'm expected to constantly refer back to a document when I'm > designing something, then don't format the thing so it takes 10 > minutes to read, and you have to sift through long paragraphs of > content to find valuable info. First, I'd argue that 10 minutes is nothing in the context of a design project. Second, the people who would use these personas were also involved in their creation, so it didn't take long to internalize them. Third, our research had uncovered insights counter to what the business had assumed, and the format helped tremendously in communicating what we'd learned. The controversial finding? That people such as Timothy didn't really care about security when sending files. By presenting that finding through a story that put it in context, people understood why the finding was in fact valid. Although Timothy seemed "cute" at first, within minutes of presenting him to the project team, people were referring to him by name and having some very productive discussions. There's a real tension between the value of "character", created by the format of a persona -- and the "cuteness" of that very format. Some people have suggested that we change the format or abandon the narrative to make it all less cute. But I don't want to do that because it's such a powerful pattern. -- Robert Barlow-Busch http://www.chopsticker.com ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
