[Design] how to write personas?

[Matt Amos]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:02 PM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> That's a nice example, but we're being too tactical (in jumping in to
> writing personas without knowing who they are) and it paints a very bright
> picture. If Norman did so well, then why do we need to change anything?

i thought the point was that you write the narrative that you want to
happen, and that can then be evaluated against the design. for
example, with the current site Normal might well think it's just a
pale Google imitation rather than a vibrant community. or, having
bothered to read the text on the left of the map, might not be able to
find out about community in his area (because that's on the wiki,
which he didn't notice).

and yes, it needs Real Data from somewhere to set the relative
importance of the various personas and/or the actions that they're
taking. (and whether that persona exists at all, but i presume the
Norman case is one which exists for some values of "extreme ironing")

> Step one is to identify the major personas with some data. Perhaps a web
> form shown to some small % of users or some other survey method. Or you can
> just ask Muki.

yep. i talked to muki after the BoF and i hope he'll join us in this
process. we can't expect to produce anything good unless it has input
from at least designers, usability experts and technical people.

cheers,

matt

> Then you will have 70% drive-by users, 20% curious people and 10% hardcore
> mappers, something like that. You can further break them down until you have
> 10-20 personas total. Then you bounce those personas off the real
> individuals themselves and check how realistic they are.
>
> The key really is to step back and be a bit strategic and get some data on
> who the users actually are, rather than guessing.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On 9/16/2011 11:55 AM, Matt Amos wrote:
>>
>> nice work, everyone, on getting started with the personas (personae?
>> antennas? antennae?) [1]. special thanks to gregory - i know it's
>> really hard to keep good notes of these kinds of discussions. i had a
>> go at writing a persona on the plane back from SOTM and this is what i
>> came up with:
>>
>> Norman:
>> Norman is an extreme ironing enthusiast and sees a mention of OSM in
>> his favourite extreme ironing blog. He thinks this is an interesting
>> idea, and follows the link to http://www.osm.org/. He finds
>> well-written and prominent information about the goals and values of
>> the project, and understands that there is a community. Wanting to
>> engage further with the community, he finds information about mappers
>> and events in his local area. Searching further, he is able to find
>> information about other extreme ironing enthusiasts who are already
>> members of the OSM community. Norman decides that this is very
>> exciting, and wants to become part of the community. He is easily able
>> to find the "sign up" process and understands all the steps involved.
>>
>> comparing this to what's on the wiki makes me wonder whether i'm Doing
>> It Wrong - should personas be short, bullet-point-like, or is it more
>> helpful from a design point of view to have (perhaps more of) these
>> prose-y, narrative descriptions?
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> matt
>>
>> [1]
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Design_Mailing_List/OSM.org_Personas
>>
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