On Dec 27, 2008, at 11:47 PM, Angel Marquez wrote:
I was thinking you would do your research, create personas based on
your
findings, find their real life equivalents, and use something
similar to the
character sheets to track their behaviors during usability testing
with
prototypes etc..
THEN
Use those stats to fine tune the design while collecting the
character types
and offering them to the cyber community.
It was a fleeting morning coffee thought though...
It's an interesting notion.
I like the idea of tying together with some uniform structure all
phases of the deliverables, from early design through refinement and
launch. At an abstract level, I think that's what you're describing.
I'm a big fan of functional-level personas: personas that are created
and curated with specific functionality in mind. Using this approach,
when you're designing the print functionality of your product, you'd
create and use different personas than if you're creating a data-merge
capability. This way the personas and scenarios are tightly tied to
the functionality you're focusing on.
I like functional-level personas better than design-project-wide
personas because it's easier to have them inform the specific design
requirements. No doubt, they take more time and effort (at least to
get started -- over time the team creates a substantial library of
personas which can be rejuvenated for new functionality). I think the
initial cost is worth it, but I know a lot of folks disagree.
I think in my approach of these lower-level personas, sharing them
with the cyber community is less valuable, since it's unlikely that
they are expressed in any applicable form for people not working on
the localized project.
However, there's a lot to be said for some relative of the DnD
character sheets to help with the curation of the ever growing library
of user research data, personas, and their match with the library of
patterns and components.
Don't give up on this idea. I think there's something to it.
:)
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jsp...@uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool
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