On Nov 19, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Jeff White wrote: > I realize part of the perceived value of personas is the narrative. > I do think, as someone in this thread suggested, that formatting the > data in more of an outline format - headings, bullets, etc - > removing some fluff, would go a long way towards getting people to > actually consume the data.
I think this is where people often get confused. One of the values of a persona is the ability to use them to tell a narrative. That doesn't mean you have to have the entire narrative spelled out in front of you. The primary goal of a persona is to assist in making informed design decisions. One of the ways we communicate those details of a persona, when we're presenting them, is through a narrative. If you've ever been through a debriefing on an ethnographic-based study, it's all about the stories. So, we use these personas to tell the story of the user/customer/participant. As I've said before, our persona model has evolved over the years (the current model can be seen at http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-design-research-personas slide 27). We try and create a balance between the narrative and presenting information in a more consumable decision making format. There are three main parts to our personas: 1. The day in the life narrative—we try and keep this to a few paragraphs max. It should provide an overview of how this person uses the product/service, or how they try and accomplish related tasks in other products/services is the product/service we're working on doesn't actually exist yet. 2. The persona DNA—this is a mapping of knowledge, activities and behaviors, and a product life cycle usage timeline. We're attempting to map the first two segments (knowledge and activities & behaviors) on a 1-5 scale, where 1 is less knowledge/activity and 5 is the highest knowledge/activity present. This enables us to see what's important, what's not important, and what we can leverage from past experience/knowledge from this person when designing. 3. Descriptors—don't really have a good name for this section, but it's basically a bullet point listing of things like Goals, Influencers, Frustrations and Pain Points, Questions, Other Applications/Sites. This is where we list out specific items that can easily be scanned. The point is that personas as a design tool aren't as effective when just in narrative format. Designers don't want to read 4 pages of text to find out what they need to know. They need to be able to see one page with a list of bullets that says "Here's everything you need to think about when designing for Susan." This is what we've found from both our personas and usability reports. In our written reports, they want a list of bullet points—let someone else read the long winded descriptions. They don't have time, nor do they want to take time to read a novel. Cliff notes! And I have to say, that once we started taking this approach, it made it more effective for management and even ourselves. I'm with Jeff on this one—they don't need to be more than they need to be to get the job done. After all, what's the point in writing a 7 page persona if it ends up not being used because the end customer finds it too much of a bother? Think about the consumer of the product— design your artifacts accordingly. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ *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
