Users, user classes & personas /LP Web Site Design: Early Research IWM14 Information Services for...

Users, user classes & personas /LP

Web Site Design: Early Research

IWM14 Information Services for the Web


Users, user classes & personas

• Identify your end-users • Identify relevant characteristics• Draw out implications of user

characteristics for your design• Represent key users as personas


Your turn

List some users for an academic conference Web site…


Users and their characteristics

“The remarkable diversity of human abilities, backgrounds, cognitive styles and personalities challenges the interaction designer. A pre-schooler playing a graphic computer game is a long way from a reference librarian doing bibliographical searches for anxious and hurried patrons. Similarly a professional programmer using a new operating system is a long way from a highly trained and experienced air traffic controller. Finally, a student learning a computer-assisted instruction session is a long way from a hotel reservations clerk serving customers for many hours per day.”

Ben Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface


What are the specific distinctions you can unpack from Shneiderman's neatly designed pairs of users?They include at least:

– age– domain experience– computer experience– degree of pressure– frequency of use– freedom of choice in system use– direct vs indirect use…


Your turn

List potentially interesting characteristics of two types of user identified for the academic conference Web site.


Implications of user characteristics?

Postgraduate studentCharacteristic For this user Implication

Direct/indirect

Education/literacy skills

Language skills

Domain knowledge

Existing knowledge

Discretionary/mandatory

Training?


PersonasHow to make sure the user isn't forgotten/made elastic?

Pin them to the wall, in the form of personas

• for core user classes, describe a specific individual who might be central to that class

• define - gender, age, personality, background, hobbies, work role and so on.

• assign name and graphic - cartoon, photo, magazine cutout

• during design process, refer to the persona(s) rather than speaking about a user


Personas for conference site

Skip Whitby heads a Research Program on Digital Television at the University of Carpentaria in Northern Australia. Obviously he'd love to come to the conference, but departmental travel funds are tight this year. He's hoping to find a lot of useful information on the Web site.

Title - Heading

1

Heading 2

Normal text

Heading 31. Bullet po int


Personas for conference site

Martin Jensen is a lecturer in Social Studies at the University of Lilleborg in Denmark. He may bring his girlfriend and 2 year old daughter with him and make a holiday of their time in the UK. The family are strict vegetarians. He's never been to the UK before and has no idea where Brighthelmstone is.

Users, user classes & personas /LP Web Site Design: Early Research IWM14 Information Services for...

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