Just to clarify, this is more of a concept piece, not an actual product. We are trying to roadmap features and integration points for the next 18 months.
________________________________ From: Bryan Minihan <bjmini...@gmail.com> To: erpdesigner <erpdesig...@yahoo.com>; disc...@ixda.org Sent: Fri, November 20, 2009 1:04:59 PM Subject: RE: [IxDA Discuss] Question on brainstorming personas Oh, my favorite kind of project =] One way to reduce the amount of brainpower to follow your methodology for a global, every-man system would be to reduce the size of your first-run audience. That is, if you don't yet know what the goals, tasks and workflows are, why assume the first launch will hit 7 billion people the first day? Why not make the assumption now that the initial audience will be: US-centric, easily reached folks who are already interested in the concept, if not financially interested in the viability of the project. That's who your first month's audience will be, anyway. >From there, establish some basic caveats to prevent painting yourself out of a global audience (localized, lacking obscure cultural references, etc). Make the 2nd run your global audience, and if the 1st was successful enough, you'll get the funding to research the folks you're looking for. Executives/Marketing Folks/Wonks often want to fast track projects and cut out all the paperwork required to really define it properly. Yet when you state (very realistically) that no just-launched app has every achieved its visionary audience the first month, they call you crazy. Bryan -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of erpdesigner Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 2:26 PM To: disc...@ixda.org Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Question on brainstorming personas Guys, I have a question on the methodology for personas - I'm doing a project right now that we are trying to fastrack and get off the ground by doing some collaborative brainstorming with the product marketing folks. We haven't done any user research, have no budget for such research, we have no product requirements, etc. I'm supposed to have concept wireframes by mid december. The users are global and across a wide spectrum of socio/economoc strata and geographic locations. So question, I'm following the following process for brainstorming around the interface: 1) Brainstorm Issues/problems we are trying to solve 2) Brainstorm user characteristics and then turn those characteristics into a couple of personas 3) From the personas, brainstorms goals, and user tasks. 4) Flow out the user tasks. 5) Start turning the tasks into a high level structure and either quickly brainstorm on a paper some drawing around either a vertical slice of the UI or a top level horizontal slice. 6) After the fact, go out and find users who fit the characteristics of the personas and either create new personas, or validate the pretend personas. The whole idea is to get the team to think about who the users are, think about what the user's goals and tasks are, and create a personas that can then drive the rapid paper prototype process. When I've done brainstorming where we are quickly doing design and have non-design stakeholders participating, I have used this technique several times with good results. I learned it over 10 years from designers who embraced the Inmates Are Running the Asylum Book by Alan Cooper. So some other designers in the brainstorming session did not like the technique, particularly around the personas, because they felt we were creating stereotypes. In addition, the designers felt that we should brainstorm the user goals and tasks first and have those drive how we create personas, not the other way around, i.e. Personas drive user goals, tasks. I've always done it the above way, and never had a problem with somebody question the methodology. I think that one of the issues is that we were stretching our knowledge a bit as we have users in emerging market countries, that we might not necessarily be as familiar with as say a country in the developing world, like the US or the UK. Obviously I'll admit I could update some of my methodology and learning- but I'm wondering, does anybody else follow this process? What literature is there out there that can validate this, other than the Inmates are Running the Asylum? What are good articles/books that outline a good process for generating personas, goals, tasks, and then interface designs in collaborative brainstorming sessions? Ginny Redish's User and Task Analysis come to mind, and The Bridge Method by Tom Dayton... Any ideas? -Wendy Boucher-Fischer ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
