Personas - User Focused Design (Human–Computer Interaction Series)

People relate to other people, not to simplified types or segments. This is the concept that underpins this book. Personas, a user centered design methodology, covers topics from interaction design within IT, through to issues surrounding product design, communication, and marketing. Project developers need to understand how users approach their products from the product’s infancy, and regardless of what the product might be. Developers should be able to describe the user of the product via vivid depictions, as if they – with their different attitudes, desires and habits – were already using the product. In doing so they can more clearly formulate how to turn the product's potential into reality. Based on 20 years’ experience in solving problems for businesses and 15 years of research, currently at the IT University of Copenhagen, Lene Nielsen is Denmark’s leading expert in the persona method. She has a PhD in personas and scenarios, and through her research and practical experiences has developed her own approach to the method – 10 Steps to Personas. This second edition of Personas – User Focused Design presents a step-by-step methodology of personas which will be of interest to developers of IT, communications solutions and innovative products. This book also includes three new chapters and considerable expansion on the material in the first edition. Contents 1 Introduction: Stories About Users 1.1 A Career with Personas 1.2 To Be Able to Enter into the Lives of the Users 1.3 Focusing 1.4 Many Names, One Concept 1.5 Product Development 1.6 Personas for IT and Products 1.7 Two, Four, or Six Personas? 1.8 A Process, not a User Portrait 1.9 Ten Steps to Personas 1.10 Other Approaches to Personas 1.10.1 The Goal-Directed Perspective 1.10.2 The Role-Based Perspective 1.10.3 The Engaging Perspective 1.10.4 The Fiction-Based Perspective 1.11 Criticism 1.12 Persona, Narrativity, and System Development 1.13 Reporting at Virk.dk and the Citizens of Denmark 1.13.1 Reporting Through Virk.dk 1.13.2 The Starting Point 1.13.3 The Personas 1.13.4 Scenarios 1.13.5 In Use 1.13.6 Borger.dk 1.13.7 The Personas Descriptions References 2 A Slice of the World 2.1 Preparation 2.2 Methods 2.3 Examples of Data Collection 2.3.1 Coats and Down 2.3.2 Virk.dk 2.3.3 Borger.dk References 3 Finding Connections 3.1 Get the Meaning Across 3.1.1 Variables 3.1.2 Affinity Diagrams 3.1.3 System of Coordinates 3.2 Use of Secondary Data 3.3 Group Analysis 3.4 From Hypothesis to Knowledge 3.5 Is It Possible to Generalise? 3.6 Is the Analysis Reliable? 3.7 Is the Study Valid? 3.8 Opposition to the Results 3.9 The Final Number 3.9.1 Borger.dk 3.9.2 Virk.dk 3.9.3 Website for Asthmatics 3.9.4 Coats and Down References 4 Persona Writing 4.1 Writing the Persona 4.2 Stereotype, Archetype, or Persona 4.3 People as Form 4.4 Personas as Characters 4.5 Fact or Fiction 4.6 Engaging Stories 4.7 Thelma & Louise: Recognition, Alignment, and Allegiance 4.8 A Real Person 4.9 Back to the Persona Description 4.10 Consider the Reader 4.11 Writing Style 4.12 Photos 4.13 The Name 4.14 Group Personas 4.15 Interested Parties 4.16 Assumption Personas, Ad Hoc Personas and Proto-Personas 4.17 Lay-Out—A Danish Template 4.18 Posters, Mood Boards, and Playing Cards 4.19 Documents Supporting the Persona Description 4.20 Video Personas 4.21 Personas in Use 4.22 A Persona Template References 5 Personas in Use 5.1 Situations 5.2 Three Theories as to What Makes People Act 5.3 Interaction Design and Product Design 5.4 Acceptance 5.5 Including the Organisation in the Validation 5.6 Dissemination 5.7 Personas in Use 5.8 Scenarios for Discussing Future Crises 5.9 Scenarios for IT System Development 5.10 Persona and Scenario 5.11 Creating a Story 5.12 Scenarios as Stories 5.13 Narrative Structure 5.13.1 The Scene 5.13.2 Events 5.13.3 Goals 5.13.4 Obstacles 5.13.5 Cohesion 5.13.6 Closure 5.13.7 Causality and Plot 5.13.8 The Narrator 5.14 Design for Various Usages 5.15 Writing and Reading 5.16 The Difficult Writing Process 5.17 The Scenario and the Reader 5.18 Documentation 5.19 Co-design 5.20 Acting 5.21 Advantages and Obstacles, Pros and Cons 5.22 Templates References 6 Personas Go Agile 6.1 Persona User Stories 6.2 Understanding the Persona 6.3 The User Story 6.4 The Method References 7 Going Global—International Personas 7.1 Data for International Personas 7.2 Planning and Funding 7.3 International Data Collection 7.4 Recruitment of Participants 7.5 Analysis 7.6 Presenting the User Insights 7.7 Benefits of International Personas 7.8 Perspectives on Culture 7.9 Arla Foods—From Blue Collar Workers to Empathy References 8 Automatic Persona Generation for Online Content Creators: Conceptual Rationale and a Research Agenda 8.1 Introduction 8.1.1 State of the Art in Data-Driven Personas 8.1.2 Evaluation of Personas 8.2 Automatic Generation of Personas 8.2.1 Need for Automatic Persona Generation 8.3 APG: System and Methodology 8.3.1 Overview of System Functionality 8.3.2 Persona Generation Process 8.3.3 Applicability of APG in Varied Contexts 8.4 Setting the Research Agenda for APG 8.4.1 Design Philosophy of Automatically Generated Personas 8.4.2 Choosing and Generating Profile Information 8.4.3 Deciding Information Architecture 8.5 Summary of Challenges in Automatic Persona Generation 8.6 Conclusion References 9 Making Your Personas Live 9.1 Updates and Revision 9.2 Ambassadors 9.3 An Instrument in the Tool-Box 9.4 What Personas Are Used for 9.5 Benefits 9.6 Value 9.7 Challenges 9.8 Recommendations 9.8.1 Have Thorough and Valid Data, It Provides Credibility 9.8.2 The Description Should Evoke Empathy 9.8.3 It Should Be Easy to Distinguish the Descriptions from Each Other 9.8.4 Keep Persona Descriptions and Scenarios Separate 9.8.5 Consider What Tasks the Personas Should Solve 9.8.6 Obtain Support in the Organization from Both Employees and Management 9.8.7 Consider How to Share Knowledge 9.8.8 Sustain the Method 9.9 Goal Achieved References People relate to other people, not to simplified types or segments. This is the concept that underpins this book. Personas, a user centered design methodology covers topics from interaction design within IT, through to issues surrounding product design, communication, and marketing.Project developers need to understand how users approach their products from the product’s infancy, and regardless of what the product might be. Developers should be able to describe the user of the product via vivid depictions, as if they – with their different attitudes, desires and habits – were already using the product. In doing so they can more clearly formulate how to turn the product's potential into reality.With contributions from professionals from Australia, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Russia, and the UK presenting real-world examples of persona method, this book will provide readers with valuable insights into this exciting research area. The inspiration to create user descriptions includes character-driven narratives, and the film Thelma & Louise is analyzed in order to understand how the development process can also be an engaging story in various professional contexts.With a solid foundation in her own research at the IT University of Copenhagen and more than five years of experience in solving problems for businesses, Lene Nielsen is Denmark’s leading expert in the persona method. She has a PhD in personas and scenarios, and through her research and practical experiences she has developed her own approach to the method – 10 Steps to Personas. Personas – User Focused Design presents a step-by-step methodology of personas which will be of interest to developers of IT, communications solutions and innovative products. People relate to other people, not to simplified types or segments. This is the concept that underpins this book. Personas, a user centered design methodology, covers topics from interaction design within IT, through to issues surrounding product design, communication, and marketing. Based on 20 years’ experience in solving problems for businesses and 15 years of research, currently at the IT University of Copenhagen, Lene Nielsen is Denmark’s leading expert in the persona method. She has a PhD in personas and scenarios, and through her research and practical experiences has developed her own approach to the method – 10 Steps to Personas. This second edition of __Personas – User Focused Design__ presents a step-by-step methodology of personas which will be of interest to developers of IT, communications solutions and innovative products. This book also includes three new chapters and considerable expansion on the material in the first edition. Contending that people view each other as individuals, not classifiable types in a segmented society, this volume explains a versatile concept of user-focused design, solidly backed by research, and helpful in IT product design as much as character-led movies