Re: Desktop personas (draft)
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 16:55 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote: > 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). Could someone please put their personas on a wiki page, so we can perfect them and make them official, and review them regularly? For instance you could create this page: http://live.gnome.org/Personas -- 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)
> 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
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: 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: 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
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
Re: Desktop personas (draft)
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 :) -- Santiago Roza Departamento I+D - Thymbra [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Desktop personas (draft)
Le mardi 06 décembre 2005 à 18:08 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : > Hi, > > Murray Cumming wrote: > > I think both our development and marketing would be helped (to have > > organisational focus) by having Personas. A university was working on them > > a couple of years ago, but that effort seems to have failed. > > > > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-December/msg00482.html > > So - who wants to take this on? (don't be shy) Just as a quick reply because it seems like a good way to structure marketing efforts: there are three groups of desktop personas: 1. private 2. business 3. public sector 1. private personas 1.1 Youngster - The youngster is roughly between 15 and 25 years old and still in the education system (school/college/university). The computer is more than a tool - it is a natural part of his/her life. On the desktop he uses a browser to surf the net (with the typical media plug-ins), email, instant messaging and an office suite (text, spreadsheet, presentation). He is open to blogging and may have a blog himself. VOIP will save him money on long distance calls. He typically owns an mp3 player, a digital camera and a mobile phone and wants to connect them to his computer. He will do basic image manipulation and likes to manage his collection of photos and videos. He does not care about free because his software is already "free" - he has enough friends who "give" it to him. Important is that his computer just works. Bluescreens, long texts vanishing suddenly into nirvana, reinstalls, viruses and spyware drive him nuts. He will like to plug-in a USB printer or a scanner and it just works. He does not care about backups but will be more than happy to figure out that somebody else did for him when it becomes necessary. Can be reached on open days / events and simply next door 1.2 Literate Knows how to use a computer. Uses internet and an office suite. Needs less than the youngster but will be happy to make his tax declaration at the end of the year. Probably has some kids and likes kids software too. Can be reached on open days / events and simply next door 1.3 Illiterate -- Grew up with the mechanical typewriter. Still likes it simplicity - put paper in, type, finished. Falls therefore immediately in love with the google homepage. Prefers abiword over openoffice and still thinks it has way to many menues, buttons and options. Uses computer to write and print texts, write emails and surf the internet. Would be very happy to manage his photos from his digital camera and do basic image operations like contrast, brightness, resize, crop. Can be reached on open days / events and simply next door 2. business persona == 2.1 small business - free appeals to him - office suite, email, browser - hates viruses and spyware - likes vino if a knowledgable person sits on the other end - simply does not know what OSS can do for him - feels good to hear about success stories - can be reached on open days / events and simply next door 2.2 medium business 2.3 corporate [novell, redhat, ibm, canonical and others care about them] 3. public sector persona = - schools, colleges/universities, administration - free appeals to them (both beer and freedom) - no viruses appeals to them - feels good to hear about success stories - can be reached on open days / events, direct contact Well, one can write way more, but that is what quickly comes out of my fingers. Marcus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
