What is the goal of persona creation? To a large extent it's a framing tool. Persona creation is a tool to "feel the pain" of the activity, to empathize with the users. The research, which goes into creation of personas does not contradict, and actually may complement the activity centered design process.
Creation of personas are not necessary (or "useful"), when *everyone*involved in the design already feels the pain of the activity for which the product is designed. In this case, the frames created by would be personas are already internalized. Alphasmart is one good example of the activity pain felt by the designers, who listened to the users. The company has tried to sell more or less standard laptops to the high schools initially. Imagine 30 power plugs in the classroom. Teachers suggested removing unnecessary features. Designers have listened and the company now sells much simpler, cheaper, hard to destruct wireless word processors, which runs for six months from two AA batteries. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fWVIwmrfiA (skip to 26 min, the rest of the clip is also quite educational: total user experience created by iTunes, "add value, not features" at StarMine and other concepts all too familiar to this list). Oleh -- Oleh Kovalchuke Interaction Design is the Design of Time http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm ________________________________________________________________ *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
