Re: [Usability] FLOSS Usability Testing Suite - persona work and status

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Charline!  You've given me a lot of 
ideas and feedback - see below for some specific thoughts.

> What will these personas be used for?  Right now, you have defined 
> them by their professions/activities.  Are you sure this is what will 
> be most useful?

I'm not sure what will be the most useful - I was hoping to get some 
feedback from the people who would be using them along those lines.  I 
did not start them off as based on professions/activities.  I don't 
intend to leave them that way either ... at this point the largest 
differentiator I saw that made sense to use was the frequency of use of 
the software.  So Henri will be the casual user while we have other 
users who use it all the time, and thus need more advanced features.  
This would be an interesting topic to discuss - can I create skeletons 
of the others first though, so my initial work is a little more fully 
represented?

I'm open to changing these - however I'd like to hear from the people 
who will use them what they need too.  It sounds like you're familiar 
with personas so perhaps you also have encountered situations as I have 
where personas are created and then never used because they're not 
really capturing the right info in the right way?  I want to avoid that 
here.

> I am asking this, because in design, we tend to create our personas on 
> the basis of differences in mental models or behaviours.  We tried to 
> avoid professions, because people from different professions might 
> have the same mental model for a product and thus, what they expect 
> and how they use it might be the same.  I would put them under the 
> same persona. In reverse, people from the same occupation might behave 
> very differently because of the way they approach their work and, 
> consequently, their needs for design will be very different.

Agreed.  As I mentioned above, I'm planning on basing them on their 
behaviours.

> By the way, what data are you using to create these personas?
Some months ago I create an initial survey to try to collect data from 
usability professionals.  The survey was sent out to this list, KDE's 
usability list, a linkedIn list, Ayatana's list, VanUE list, and to a 
few professional usability testers I know.

There were only 26 responses.

If these turn out too narrowly focused I am very open to putting 
together a different survey.  The lack of data is certainly concerning, 
but it is better than nothing.  I'd like to follow this data set a 
little further though.  As I mentioned I'm going to put the raw data up 
on the wiki once I finish analyzing it.

> Description of Henri:
> Henri is quite interesting but still feels a bit underdeveloped.  What 
> might help would be to add Heni's goals - make sure you distinguish 
> between end goals (what Henri ultimately wants to accomplish) and 
> experiential goals (how Henri wants to feel while he is accomplishing 
> the goal).  This will add some depth to your persona.  Another thing 
> you can do to give Henri some substance, is to project what he will be 
> doing in 5 years.  For example, Henri wants to become a usability 
> expert (end goal).  Henri likes to feel that he is making constant 
> progress and getting closer to his goal (experience goal).  In 5 
> years,  Henri will be giving invited lectures on remote usability 
> testing in the open source community (projection in the future).
Interesting ideas - give me some time to try to incorporate them.  I'm 
hesitant to focus on Henri's future though as other personas to be 
created will embody the more professional or more frequent user.  But 
you're right, he is under-developed - I've posted him to stimulate some 
feedback but also to re-energize the project :)

> Don't forget the context surrounding Henri.  What elements of his 
> context would impact his use of technology?  Henri spends a lot of 
> time commuting and needs to work on the go?  In his job he is 
> constantly interrupted?  He depends on his PA to know what meetings he 
> has?  etc.
I'd want to ensure that there is value in adding these details.  I see 
value in two ways:
1 - adds to the knowledge surrounding needs for functionality and use/tasks
2 - adds to the realism/relatable-ness of Henri.

Let me refine him some more and see where we sit - I want to keep these 
to a single page too, so perhaps a one-pager is good to start and a more 
detailed personas could be created if developers/designers need more detail.

> Another thing I would suggest:  don't mix needs with solutions.  I 
> feel that it is very important to elaborate on the needs but to avoid 
> proposing solutions.  Henri should inspire to create and innovate.  
> Proposing specific solutions to needs does cut creativity a bit 
> short.  Keep in mind that there could be 20 solutions to a situation.  
> Your persona should highlight the needs and become the context in 
> which a variety of solutions can be brainstormed by developers and 
> designers.
The personas I've created before suffered from too little detail for the 
solution designers.  They found them less useful because it wasn't clear 
what solutions existed based on the personas.  They wanted some bounds 
to work with (and break as they saw fit). I wrote these ones a lot more 
"crunchy" on solution detail to gauge the developer/designer waters.  I 
agree that creating design solutions at this point is premature, but 
presenting some ideas for discussion/revision/brainstorming is a good 
idea.  That was the intention here.  Again it goes to the needs of the 
consumers, which I haven't really heard yet.  I can back it off if 
that's the approach the team wants to take.

> Finally, I would keep the persona clean of any technology discussion 
> or illustration because the persona should not be reduced to a few 
> "user" behaviours.  Instead, present their enablers and barriers to 
> adoption.  You are creating a portrait.  This portrait should allow 
> designers and developers to correctly infer many of the persona's 
> behaviours that you don't have time or room to cover.

Could you elaborate on what you mean here?  I'm not sure what you mean 
by illustration, for example.  Are you referring to the brief scenarios?



Thanks again Charline, and please if anyone else has any feedback or 
points they'd like to discuss - chime in!  The point of posting this was 
to generate discussion and further exploration.

Thanks,

Kirk