[IxDA Discuss] personas for an Intranet

[Dave Cronin]

I certainly agree that your approach is correct.

One of most powerful aspects of using personas is the fact that they are
meant to be archetypes-- a persona represents the needs of a whole bunch
of people who share common behaviors and motivations.

For a set of personas to be an effective design tool, it should be as
small and as focused as possible. If there are too many personas it will
be difficult to make sure you are focused on the specific needs of each
when you try to use them to make design decisions.

The key thing that your colleague is missing is that if two users share
the same behaviors with respect to the portal, have the same motivations
for using the portal and have the same attitudes and aptitudes, they
should be represented by a single persona.

-dave

__________

Cooper | Product Design for a Digital World

David Cronin
Director of Interaction Design

office (415) 267 3504
mobile (415) 699 3036
dave at cooper.com | www.cooper.com

All information in this message is proprietary & confidential.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com 
> [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On 
> Behalf Of Leah Cunningham
> Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 11:12 AM
> To: discuss at ixda.org
> Subject: [IxDA Discuss] personas for an Intranet
> 
> 
> I'm doing personas for an intranet portal. I haven't done a 
> lot of these and the client has never done it. I have 
> identified four primary ways in which a user would interact 
> with the site and I want to do a persona for each. The client 
> however, wants to do a persona for every specific job role 
> they have in the company. We are going back and forth on this 
> and I am having a hard time articulating my argument. First 
> of all, am I right? Second of all, if I am right I'd be 
> interested in some concrete examples that will help support 
> my argument. I've made the "don't try to be all things to all people"
> argument to no avail. I think I need to be more specific.