Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
I met the guy who did firefox's community (and release manager I believe)stuff (and I think marketing) at OSCON. He said he would be happy to talk with us about what he did to help Firefox. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 12:05 +, Alex Hudson wrote: > On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 12:24 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > > > There were criticisms in there of Nautilus, the menu editor, performance > > > and usage of GNOME VFS (without specifics, it has to be said). Did those > > > ever get sent back to the Nautilus developers? How about a proposal to > > > include SMEG in 2.14? > > > > OK, but don't think it's going to help our marketing to have a discussion > > about whether spatial nautilus is good or not, as long as this mailing > > list remains as poorly informed about the user experience as the average > > slashdot commenter. > > As an outsider butting in :o), I would say it does, and being "poorly > informed" probably helps this list more than it hinders it. I'm not sure > what model most people have of marketing (in terms of, how does it > actually work, and how do you seek to achieve things using it?), but for > me the idea is that you're trying to get someone to draw a conclusion or > make a decision based on the materials/information you give them - > usually, a decision to buy (which may not be the case here). The most > convincing argument you usually hear is the one you make to yourself. > And also, before I relurk again, I would suggest not trying to do too > much too soon - i.e., start small. Personally, I would attempt to hit > developers: getting people enthused about the GNOME platform to build > cool stuff for it. Developers build demand, users drive it IMHO - MS > have been fantastic at that in the past. Beagle, dashboard, F-spot, that > kind of app already generates buzz and excitement. There are surely some > quick wins there. I hope you don't lurk, it's good to have different perspective and what you're saying sounds pretty interesting. :-) sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> If you think of a bell population, you have > 80% within two standard deviations (I think?). yeah 80% is good; what i don't want is personas who're so individual and pretty and unique :) that they don't reflect the userbase at all. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
[snip] > You can't make everyone happy all the time; personas is just a tool to > help figure out how to prioritise who to make happy when, if you see > what I mean. And a way for developers to remember that they should worry about the _goals_ of real people. Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 11:25 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote: > at least from a marketing point of view, you can't ask me to "forget > trying to cover my userbase"... that's suicidal; we'd be telling > anecdotes, not segmenting anything. You're still missing the point, I think. The general idea is to cover the user base, but the idea of personas is not to cover the userbase. If you think of a bell population, you have 80% within two standard deviations (I think?). Personas are a tool whereby you attempt to design 'average' users that you think most people are going to be pretty close to. By aiming at those personas, you're trying to design something which is pretty good for most people. It's attempting to recognise that the distribution of wants, needs and skills across human populations isn't uniform - most people want roughly the same thing, most people have roughly the same skills (for some definition of roughly), and that there is some polarisation there too. Personas attempt to cover a large range of people, but also includes a weighting of what you think the most important issues are. You can't make everyone happy all the time; personas is just a tool to help figure out how to prioritise who to make happy when, if you see what I mean. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
Just in case anybody feels ignored: I love this discussion, and plan to encourage others to get involved when you've settled on some things yourselves (rather than invite an overwhelming number of responses right now). Murray Cumming [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> Usability and > marketing are totally different things, and of course you're going to > need different tools for them. err... no. usability has everything to do with users' needs and expectations, and that has everything to do with marketing. but usability and advertising are totally different things, i agree with that. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
gnome desktop personas - my very first draft
i started to draft a few characteristics of my "personas"; please tell me what you think. remember it's VERY conceptual, they don't even have names yet :) i didn't know if we should picture only our core segments, or a more general scenario, so i took the middle road... but this will have a zillion iterations i guess, so feel free to suggest. * teenager (17) high school student has a girlfriend intensive email (personal) intensive im (msn) basic web browsing: pr0n and flash games (+webmail) some office usage for school cellphone camera + cheap usb mp3 player + playstation2 uses p2p for music basic-medium (windows) computer skills zero free software awareness * young techie (28) windows programmer (visual studio) single and looking intensive email (work, personal) intensive im (several networks) intensive web browsing (even runs a blog) medium-intensive office usage for work high-range cellphone + ipod uses p2p for music + an occasional movie big cd/dvd collection advanced (windows) computer skills medium free software awareness * not-so-young techie (46) editor of tech section in major newspaper married, two kids intensive email (work) basic im (work) medium-high web browsing (news, research) intensive office usage for work mid-range cellphone + pda does not use p2p medium cd/dvd collection medium-high computer skills (some unix background) low-medium free software awareness * not-so-young non-techie (51) has a small business divorced, three kids basic email (with some ppt presentations) zero im basic web browsing (news) intensive office usage for work does not use p2p small cd/dvd collection basic (windows) computer skills zero free software awareness * young non-techie (34) graphic designer (photoshop, illustrator) married, one kid medium email (personal, some work) medium im (personal) basic web browsing (news, recommended sites) medium office usage for work does not use p2p huge cd/dvd collection (artsy type, loves music) basic (windows) computer skills (advanced for specific apps) zero free software awareness -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
Alex Hudson wrote: [It's also valid to argue that personas are not a useful tool; many people hold that viewpoint. I don't, personally, but there are significant limitations to how you can use it IMHO] There's a huge difference between "personas are not a useful tool" and "personas are not a useful tool *for marketing*". You wouldn't figure out a marketing strategy by doing videotaped interactive user testing of our slogans, or making functional paper prototypes of marketing plans. And you wouldn't make usable software by holding a focus group meeting or buying advertising time during the Super Bowl. Usability and marketing are totally different things, and of course you're going to need different tools for them. -- Dan -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Tarzan and Jane - GNOME personas 2005
Le mercredi 07 décembre 2005 à 15:17 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : > Hi, > > Marcus Bauer wrote: > > Sounds all very good. Here are my suggestions for five personas: > > > > Jane, 19yo, college student. > > Tarzan, 30yo, no kids, running a small business > > Doris, 35yo, two kids, parttime job freelance design > > Cary, 45yo, "decision maker desktop" IT dept. of 200 employee company > > Miss Ellie, 60yo, 4 grand children > > > Doris & Miss Ellie don't seem to me to fit the bill. My idea behind Doris is that she is mother of two kids -let's say six and ten. Thus she stands for the "parents" group and is therefore looking for software for kids and would like to surveil/restrict her kids internet use. As a freelance she will be happy to use gimp, inkscape and scribus (yes, she is not religious about gnome) instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars for adobe for little extra use. As opposed to Tarzan no need for sophisticated business software (ERP,CRM etc.blabla...). Being more the creative type she is not to much into tech and usually doesn't care about backup until its too late. Of Miss Ellie I thought as the grandparent generation, grown up with dial phones and mechanical typewriters and little affinity to technology but is using computers to write and print letters, save recipes, surf the internet and write emails. Likes the simplicity of an old transitor radio: on/off-loundness and a knob for station search. Just needs to be plugged in. No cabling, no wiring, no equalizer, no narrow-bandwidth station sharpener, no RDS, no DMT, no > Perhaps Chad, a > lead programmer at Cyberdyne Computers, a company writing software and > considering a port to Linux, would be a better fit for a 3rd party > developer? You are absolutly right, I missed him out. He will care about IDEs, toolkits, libraries, Java vs. mono, .net, available documentation, license issuses of gtk vs. qt. > And it'd be cool if Tarzan could have a blog that gets read > by over 5,000 people per day. yep, imho fits the profile. > And how about having Cary be the IT > manager for a mid-European town council, or perhap a small county in the > UK, or a French school district, rather than a private company? I would agree to that too (just my humble opinion) > > And we could replace Miss Ellie with Caroline, a product manager at a > leading distribution of Linux? Like I said I wouldn't replace Ellie, but adding Caroline seems a very good idea. However I would call her Fleur and let her be the editor of a linux magazine ;-). Maybe just the editor of the tech section of a newspaper? -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> Does that make sense? no it doesn't :) at least from a marketing point of view, you can't ask me to "forget trying to cover my userbase"... that's suicidal; we'd be telling anecdotes, not segmenting anything. before this weekend i'll try to come up with something in the middle of those two undesirable extremes (too-generic and non-representative), and post it here too see what you guys think. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 10:35 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote: > yeah, and i agree with this of course. what i don't like is the idea > of creating "living" characters, at the cost of making them A LOT less > representative of your target audience. > > for example, alex replaced marcus' typical teenager with someone who > uses openoffice, firefox and gaim... that must be like 5% of > 18-year-olders (who have computers), with the other 95% not even > knowing that alternatives to ms office, internet explorer and msn > messenger actually EXIST. Right, but you're actually conflating two problems here (and it's quite subtle): i. the persona is not representative ii. personas are not representative The first one is easy: a bad persona is useless. So, in my example, if I've invented a persona that doesn't really reflect our user base, then it's a bad persona. Care does need to be taken to get them close to reality. Number two is harder. The intuitive side of you probably doesn't like the idea of detailed persona: this is true of everyone, I think, even Cooper admits that they are counter-intuitive. The "footprint" of a persona - how much of your userbase it covers - is clearly going to be very small. But, forget trying to cover the userbase: what you're after is a number of stakes in the ground, hopefully evenly dispersed, which represent important points. It's a bit like averages. It's a common saying over here that the average family has 2.4 children (whether or not this is still right, I have no idea). Of course, *no* family has 2.4 children. But, the important point is that (assumption: population follows a bell distribution) families are likely to be near that figure. If you can think of it that way, you're likely to see the use of personas. Of course, like any tool, they can be over-used, but it's a different idea to market segmentation (which I think is another valid tool to be used). Does that make sense? [It's also valid to argue that personas are not a useful tool; many people hold that viewpoint. I don't, personally, but there are significant limitations to how you can use it IMHO] Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Tarzan and Jane - GNOME personas 2005: JANE
Le mercredi 07 décembre 2005 à 14:08 +0100, Marcus Bauer a écrit : > Sounds all very good. Here are my suggestions for five personas: > > Jane, 19yo, college student. > Tarzan, 30yo, no kids, running a small business > Doris, 35yo, two kids, parttime job freelance design > Cary, 45yo, "decision maker desktop" IT dept. of 200 employee company > Miss Ellie, 60yo, 4 grand children No complaints so far, then here comes the profile of Jane: Hello, my name is Jane and I'm 19 years old going to college. And the topic at hand: teenagers and Linux, Open Source, et al. First of all, everyone needs to understand that kids aren’t going to randomly get up and decide that they want to switch to Linux for no particular reason at all. Teenagers share a lot of needs/wants/values with adults, though with some differences. Philosophical issues with the production of software will generally be a non-issue, unless the teenagers in question were brought up under open source. Most teens don’t really care about the difference between “free beer” and “free speech” (this analogy doesn’t work particularly well when you’re underage/don’t drink - free soda?). No, I’m not bashing my own age denomination here. Most teens probably won’t even understand the difference. I knew that many Linuxes were “free” when I started using Debian, but I didn’t understand the philosophy. It’s only through months of use and cultural immersion that I’ve earned an appreciation for the non-monetary values of open source. It’s just a question of exposure. At any rate, either teens will have someone they trust encouraging them/forcing them to look into Linux, or they will have a practical reason to want to switch, based off some exposure or information. For girls in particular, due to environmental conditions and stereotypes, it’s really very unlikely that they want to use Linux to become l337 h4×0rz. (That usually comes afterward. :-P ) My brother was always the handy guy that could help me out when I needed it, though I generally avoided having to ask for help at all costs. So, what do most teenagers do on their computers? From my experience (most of my current friends are not heavily computer literate, and hopefully represent a decent average): * instant message * surf the web * on this note, being capable of accessing embedded media, java, flash, etc. on the web * multimedia - video, digital music, the like * on this note, downloading music - legally and/or illegally * gaming * e-mail, to a limited extent, though many teens use free web-based mail services such as Hotmail or Gmail * manage and manipulate digital photos * blog - in the Livejournal and MySpace sense * word process * school projects, which include presentations (sometimes necessarily powerpoint, due to school computers), posters, just general printing, etc. * PRINTING PICTURES * CD burning - mostly audio, but some data * iPod syncing Mainstream teens and computing are all about the desktop, period. And gaming. Things that aren’t likely to be as big issues: security, productivity stuff, hobby-centric apps for things like sewing machines (I’m not crazy, that’s my mother), etc. Given this, a teenager would probably be using the following (also, I should note that I’m a GNOME user, so I really don’t have enough experience with KDE apps to include any) (this is the specifics, not the generic desktop stuff that will be there too): * GAIM, or another multi-protocol messenger. Most teens are on either AIM or MSN for communication, at least from what I’ve seen * Firefox as the browser of choice, most likely. I like Epiphany, personally, but there are a few things that at least I would miss from FF, namely: gmail notifier, selective cookie blocking, session saver. Might not be an issue for the everyday user, though. * F-Spot for photo cataloguing. This app rocks. * GIMP, for image manipulation * gtkam or another gphoto2 frontend for getting photos off a digital camera, though there may be other solutions for this - and F-Spot will download off a camera too I believe, though I’ve never used this feature * There are fugly legal issues involved with multimedia, which for at least the present are an obstacle to multimedia and Linux. Most every teenager will want compatibility with Windows sound and video, which usually means MPlayer (and mplayerplug-in for Mozilla). MPlayer’s (valid) non-inclusion in distros like Debian makes this also more difficult. * OpenOffice.org and probably Abiword too. * the OpenClipart library - nothing like some stock images to quickly spice up a slide. Searching for clipart on the web is a pain in the ass. * Either Thunderbird or Evolution. * gtk-gnutella, as a drop-
Re: Tarzan and Jane - GNOME personas 2005
Hi, Marcus Bauer wrote: Sounds all very good. Here are my suggestions for five personas: Jane, 19yo, college student. Tarzan, 30yo, no kids, running a small business Doris, 35yo, two kids, parttime job freelance design Cary, 45yo, "decision maker desktop" IT dept. of 200 employee company Miss Ellie, 60yo, 4 grand children These five personas should sum up to at least 80% of society. The have different needs and should be well definable. The personas we're aiming to create aren't supposed to be representative of society, but representative of our target markets. Doris & Miss Ellie don't seem to me to fit the bill. Perhaps Chad, a lead programmer at Cyberdyne Computers, a company writing software and considering a port to Linux, would be a better fit for a 3rd party developer? And it'd be cool if Tarzan could have a blog that gets read by over 5,000 people per day. And how about having Cary be the IT manager for a mid-European town council, or perhap a small county in the UK, or a French school district, rather than a private company? And we could replace Miss Ellie with Caroline, a product manager at a leading distribution of Linux? Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> If the show is interesting why not. then we'll have to make it interesting :) > We can't compromise to put it on > schedule now of course i wasn't expecting that of course; a fair chance is more than enough. > depending on the approach you would give to the project and the talk. well, i hope i'll get a lot of feedback from the list, with this being a marketing team project, so the approach is negotiable :) -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
%> I disagree. What you're doing is creating living, breathing characters > which represent your target audiences. yeah, and i agree with this of course. what i don't like is the idea of creating "living" characters, at the cost of making them A LOT less representative of your target audience. for example, alex replaced marcus' typical teenager with someone who uses openoffice, firefox and gaim... that must be like 5% of 18-year-olders (who have computers), with the other 95% not even knowing that alternatives to ms office, internet explorer and msn messenger actually EXIST. alex's "persona" is very alive and all, but 95% non-representative... and i don't want that, because we're not writing a novel but segmenting our markets. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
En/na Santiago Roza ha escrit: > if it could be shown at guadec or something like that If the show is interesting why not. We can't compromise to put it on schedule now of course, but there will be a possibility to present a paper, or be invited directly if the GUADEC committee thinks your work needs to be shown in Vilanova. See http://guadectest.ourproject.org/guadec2006 to have an idea of the three tracks planned. Desktop personas could fit in any of the three, depending on the approach you would give to the project and the talk. Looks like a tough bone at a first glance. ;) -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
Hi, Santiago Roza wrote: if you follow Cooper (and I'm not exactly sure how personas are supposed to apply to marketing), you're not trying to define a target audience per se. What you're doing is actual characterisation, as a novelist might do then maybe we don't have to follow cooper strictly, because we might end up with something we can't use for marketing purposes. I disagree. What you're doing is creating living, breathing characters which represent your target audiences. To say that a specific personage can't be representative of the needs of a class of people (at least 70% or 80%) is wrong. The advantage of personas is that it's easier to think of needs in terms of a real person, you can hope to create an emotional link between the developer and the fictional character. Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> I think it is. Ideally, we could go into real depth on the personas and > how they might interact with GNOME (and also how GNOME doesn't suit > them), and do a smashing presentation of the results at GUADEC or some > other conference, to generate a feedback cycle. my two restrictions were relevance and time: if it could be shown at guadec or something like that, and we don't need it for this week, i'll gladly take care of it. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Tarzan and Jane - GNOME personas 2005
Le mercredi 07 décembre 2005 à 13:54 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : > Hi, > > Alex Hudson wrote: > > I would be happy to help contribute to some personas if people think > > it's worth doing. > > I think it is. Ideally, we could go into real depth on the personas and > how they might interact with GNOME (and also how GNOME doesn't suit > them), and do a smashing presentation of the results at GUADEC or some > other conference, to generate a feedback cycle. Sounds all very good. Here are my suggestions for five personas: Jane, 19yo, college student. Tarzan, 30yo, no kids, running a small business Doris, 35yo, two kids, parttime job freelance design Cary, 45yo, "decision maker desktop" IT dept. of 200 employee company Miss Ellie, 60yo, 4 grand children These five personas should sum up to at least 80% of society. The have different needs and should be well definable. Marcus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
[Fwd: Re: [guadec-list] Call for papers Howto]
FYI --- Begin Message --- Some ideas to improve the GUADEC call for papers procedure and make it more useful for the whole GNOME project. As a community we have two problems: - We want for the next GUADEC the greatest GNOME-related sessions ever. - We want great GNOME-related sessions to be included in any kind of relevant event. We could find perhaps a common solution for both. What if GUADEC'2006 call for papers starts conforming a (public?) database of possible talks, presentations, BOFs, debates, showcases, performances, DJ sessions (ok, we could narrow this a bit) ;) People presenting these papers will be happy of being accepted to have time&space in GUADEC's official program, of course. But... perhaps they would be also happy to know if GNOME Korea, LinuxTag, an O'Reilly conference, the main local free software event where they live or something happening in the other side of the planet want to invite them as well (they would be always able to accept or not the invitation. We are talking about promoting smaller, regional GNOME events. For them this database would be really useful to compose a great program and make local attendance and press more interested in the event. Plus we help connecting people inside the GNOME community. This would help also the GNOME Foundation every time an event requests 'someone from GNOME' to lead a session there (tendency that hopefully will increase). We could say 'choose from the menu, we recommend you this and that but maybe you find more interesting stuff for your event'. This would ease the fact that not-the-usual-suspects GNOME people will speak in conferences, acquire more experience doing this and become new-usual-suspects for the good of the whole GNOME project. I'm not saying we need to set up a great database before sending our cal l for papers. We can agree the requirements/specifications affecting the text of this Call, start with a simple process to receive the papers (can be the current not-public process, to start with) and in the meantime the proper system can be developed. If we can release it before the GUADEC, great. If not, this can be the main new feature presented in a possible events.gnome.org to be released in the second half of 2006 or so. -- Quim Gil - http://desdeamericaconamor.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ guadec-list mailing list guadec-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/guadec-list --- End Message --- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
> if you follow Cooper (and I'm not exactly sure > how personas are supposed to apply to marketing), you're not trying to > define a target audience per se. What you're doing is actual > characterisation, as a novelist might do then maybe we don't have to follow cooper strictly, because we might end up with something we can't use for marketing purposes. i haven't read the book (but i did read all the links), and i think this could be a valuable tool for describing target segments in an informal and attractive way, and then figuring out their needs, all within a flexible structure (which stimulates the flow of ideas). but if we try to be 100% strict with cooper and build "live" not-stereotypical characters, each one of our "personas" will cover 1% of our potential market, which means it'll be a useless tool. anyway, i'll try to write something before this weekend, and then throw it in the wiki to see what happens. -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
Hi, Alex Hudson wrote: I would be happy to help contribute to some personas if people think it's worth doing. I think it is. Ideally, we could go into real depth on the personas and how they might interact with GNOME (and also how GNOME doesn't suit them), and do a smashing presentation of the results at GUADEC or some other conference, to generate a feedback cycle. Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 22:44 +0100, Marcus Bauer wrote: > there are three groups of desktop personas: > > 1. private > 2. business > 3. public sector I'm going to make a quick comment about personas before people go too far in this direction - if you follow Cooper (and I'm not exactly sure how personas are supposed to apply to marketing), you're not trying to define a target audience per se. What you're doing is actual characterisation, as a novelist might do: dreaming up some example users in some actual detail. The goal isn't to cover our audience 100%, but come up with a 80% or so coverage. As an example, instead of 1.1 Youngster (which is quite a general description), you would have: 1.1 Joe Evans [you should name the persona] Joe is 17 years old, and is attending high school. He uses his PC to do homework - writing up science experiments in OpenOffice.org, doing research on the web with Firefox. He has a Livejournal and uses his AOL instant messenger account with gaim to talk to his friends. He has a k750i camera phone which can also play a small number MP3s. He has a small collection of CDs and DVDs for entertainment, and occasionally plays games on his playstation. He also enjoys watching sports on TV and plays soccer every Saturday afternoon. Now, the above example obviously means this persona doesn't cover voip, the 17yo using their computer as a home studio, or any of the other myriad different users there might be. That's not the point of a persona: they're basically characters. The way you use them is along the lines of "being able to enter maths equations really easily would help Joe with his homework", that kind of thing. Cooper usually says that five or so persona are more than enough: they should be pretty distinct. "Inmates..." also only gives a really brief overview of what they are and how they're used: to be honest, they seem mostly a kind of logic razor to me, cutting out inconsequential rubbish - stopping people focusing on corner cases and other arcania, and making them think about the big picture. It also prevents design-by-committee. A lot of what Marcus wrote down was tasks to do with media manipulation - the image manipulation program described by "Inmates.." is gold, and well worth the read. I would be happy to help contribute to some personas if people think it's worth doing. Cheers, Alex. -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
Le mardi 06 décembre 2005 à 21:04 -0300, Santiago Roza a écrit : > cool... could you throw it in the wiki so we can build on it? i'd do > it myself, but i don't think i should appear as the original author > :) The whole idea behind this little draft was to show that the often requested "data" is already there: simply go out and have a look how the people you know are using their computers. Look your friends, your co-workers, your relatives over the shoulder and ask them about their typical usage. Then burn a couple of liveCDs, boot them in their computers and try to convince them to install them at least as dual boot. Which arguments are more and which are less successful? Which arguments convince your parents and which your high school sister? Putting the idea on the wiki is like putting it in an ivory tower. Don't discuss it, don't talk about it - just go out, test your arguments, find new ones and come back and tell which ones work. Your local linux user group may be another good starting point. Marcus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
