Assignment 4: Personas and scenarios.
Here is an evaluation technique for actors and writers. And myself, who often created characters in grade school, but never managed to write a decent story with them.
The hardest part was figuring out what points to write out for the personas, since we had limited pages. Good personas should be outlined very thoroughly, enough so that they can be placed in situations that have nothing to do with the product in testing/research. Personas created with the product in mind create information that runs developers in circles.
Our class had a hard time writing up non-college-aged personas. The point of personas is to create a lens through which we can explore the product in a fresh and different way, so different age groups, marital statuses, occupations, experiences, and skill sets are the way to go. I must admit I did make one college student persona, myself, but I also constructed one for a post-college thirty-something and an older man. I based them on people and parts of people who I know or have seen before, but I did not allow any of them to be solely based on one known person.
The scenarios are pretty easy as long as the personas are sufficiently complete. The best way to draw them up is for an analyst to get into character (or into persona) and go about acting out a scenario, either in their head, or by actually going through the motions. Coming up with scenarios shouldn’t require hardcore pondering, since the personas should give researchers and analysts an idea of the sort of ways the persona would use the product. As I wrote out my scenarios, I simply asked the question, “What would so-and-so do?”
Personas are great because they’re free people. Plus, you can always write up more. The number of people required to conduct the evaluation is minimal (probably at least one person is needed), for writing and use of the personas and scenarios. And the cost is time, although that varies depending on who is writing them, and how in-depth they are. They can be used at any point in the development process: hypothesizing during the idea stage and walkthroughs once the product is published. The only skill needed is an ability to let go of your own preferences and tendencies in favor of thinking as another person(a).
