If those are already your user types, and you know them well, you don't need another layer of work on top.
However, I bet good money that those aren't your real users. Those sound more like vague categorizations without any real substance. What makes a working man use a printer differently than a male student? I don't think that is a real distinction. A better set of 4 persona's might be this: Joe the Professional Photographer, Tina the socialite with a camera-phone, Bill the office worker, and Carlos the stay-at-home Dad. Persona's don't divide people, they put a face on a kind of actor. Maybe Carlos also has a camera phone, but that need is already being met with another persona. You can use this concept to learn things, or you can use it to back up whatever you were going to do already. I don't doubt you hope to learn something from this, but you cut out the part that drives learning it. That part is thinking through all the possible kinds of people, boiling them down to the kinds that need flat white objects turned into flat colored objects, and then deciding what to build them. Also, are you looking to make the printer? Or software that will use a particular printer? Or software that just-so-happens to need to print something. In the first case, this process is a lot more akin to inventing. But the golden rule for a physical digital interface is to not multi-map buttons if you can get away with it and to have separate physical interfaces for separate tasks. So, the tool that lets you plug in your camera and crop a photo shouldn't also start the thing printing. If it is the second question, you already know what the thing CAN do, now you just need to make it work. I can make that part super easy. Interface with other software well with your drivers and DON'T include extra BS software. Almost all computers come with software to do those common photo tasks now. If you are doing the last part, you don't need printing personas. Use the ones you made to make the software itself. If you didn't do that, do it. If it is too late, it is still too late. Sorry if any of this comes off as jerky, but there are critical flaws here that need to be corrected before proceeding, otherwise you run the risk of using our advice, failing, and then deciding that IxD isn't any better than the way things are traditionally done. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36267 ________________________________________________________________ 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
