Comments on: A persona crisis

By: donna

donna — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:53:35 +0000

Good idea. I have done some reading on schema theory when researching memory and wayfinding (separately). It would have some interesting potential. Maybe I should add this to my list of IA research

By: MsM

MsM — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 09:29:17 +0000

I agree that the conceptualisation of personas is really one dimensional. How about personal schemas based on recent development and uses of Schema Theory in psychology and cognitive science?

“All human beings possess categorical rules or scripts that they use to interpret the world. New information is processed according to how it fits into these rules, called schema. These schema can be used not only to interpret but also to predict situation occurring in our environment. Think, for example, of a situation where you were able to finish another person

By: Kim Krause Berg

Kim Krause Berg — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 01:58:16 +0000

I do my “user personas” similar to how you describe, in a way that’s more affordable for my clients. Which means a lot of the task behavior I assign to my “user persona” is how I would approach it. It’s not based on detailed data supplied to me or researched by me, because my clients can’t afford that.

I create all sorts of scenerios for my test case “user”. Instead of calling them “user personas”, I often refer to them as a “user character”, which leaves the integrity for Cooper’s version intact at least (I hope).

This week I create a “user character” who will be purchasing an airplane. I’ve never actually bought one, but with a little bit of info from the client, and data I have on user and search behavior, and some demographic type info, I can create a “person” with a task scenerio, etc.

The other thing I add into my test scenerios from my life, that are often typical for people, like being interrupted by someone, a spouse or one’s children looking over one’s shoulder, youth trying to do homework research, holiday shopping and wanting to do price comparisons on the laptop while making dinner…

By: charles adler

charles adler — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 20:09:18 +0000

My first reaction is to say, why are you formalizing the definition of a Persona? Let the document be what you need it to be from a detail perspective.

So for deep, information rich sites, the persona, in my opinion, would provide insight not only into the overall interaction/experience needs of an archetype user, but also the information needs. Think Intranet.

The persona I would develop for an Intranet versus a public website would be drastically different in form and function.

By: Peter Boersma

Peter Boersma — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 09:29:11 +0000

“Target Group Description”?