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On 11/01/2010 05:49 AM, Allan Caeg wrote:<br>
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<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> In this case it looks
like there is a desire to better understand the general
Gnome user population. I'd suggest trying to focus the
personas on a market approach, rather than a software tool
approach, as it seems like they'll most likely be used as
marketing tools. Or perhaps take this opportunity to collect
data on users and present it in a data-rich way, rather than
as stereotypical users.</div>
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<div>Sorry I didn't understand what you meant here. Can you
expound?</div>
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Hi Allan,<br>
<br>
What I mean by "market" approach is that sometimes people create
"personas" for use in marketing campaigns. Think of any ad you see
where there is a stereotypical person describing how great something
is. Maybe even those Windows 7 ads where the person claims "Windows
7 was MY idea". I'd suggest that those people are actually
personas, standardized representations of users.<br>
<br>
The personas can then be used in marketing in a couple of ways, such
as trying to project a certain image or attract a certain
demographic, or internally to describe specific target demographics
(i.e. we want to sell to white males 35-40 with income over $40k, 2
kids, soccer coach .. oh, it's a persona called Jim!)<br>
<br>
These kinds of personas can be created in a way that is software
independent, i.e. we don't really know how those Windows 7 people
actually use specific apps, just the features they use (media
streaming, file sharing, etc). In this way the personas can help
designers of the overall experience, but they're not going to be
much help to software developers for specific projects. They need
to know more details about the persona's specific tasks, needs,
mental models, etc.<br>
<br>
If we want to look at personas that might be useful to individual
application designers (i.e. Gnome Shell, Cheese, etc) then we might
want to look more closely at the kinds of data we're collecting, as
simply surveying existing users in this way may not uncover the
depth of information that we need to get to. I believe it was Allan
Day's response that mentioned ethnography and interviews for
example.<br>
<br>
<br>
I hope I've been a little more clear here. If not let me know and
I'll write up a response after a little more sleep :)<br>
<br>
<br>
After all that, my opinion is that we do <i>something</i> to take
advantage of this opportunity. And if we want to create "personas"
then we just need to be clear the type we'll be creating. For
example I see nothing wrong with creating a set of 5 personas that
describe at a high level the type of user Gnome designers want to
design for, and as mentioned they would fit well within the HIG.
They essentially are generalized users, not specific users of
individual apps.<br>
<br>
Kirk<br>
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