http://www.informationdesign.org/ Dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information experience industries. en-us plato@xs4all.nl 2013-05-21T17:09:18+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 The more data the document contains, the stronger the need for proper information design. "UX deliverables had a rocky year so far. I feel particularly bad for the humble wireframe, which took some serious knocks over the past few months. There's also a growing skepticism about the value of Personas. The Persona thing made me particularly uneasy because I've always been a huge fan, and we still start most of our projects with a workshop to define Personas and User Journeys." (Rian van der Merwe ~ Elezea) User experience 2013-05-21T17:09:18+01:00 Timeline forgets the very first personas for design: Henry Dreyfuss' Joe and Josephine (1955). "These steps (solid research, creative analysis, and compelling presentation and rollout) can bring teams back around to a tool that they badly need. Feel free to dump the shallow personas that people roll their eyes at. It's time to reengage with empathetic work by making your users real, and letting their real voices be heard." (Kyra Edeker and Jan Moorman ~ UX Magazine) Personas 2013-02-22T10:47:29+01:00 They will always be a great starting point for the unknowns of empathy and UCD. "There have been some who have proclaimed the impending demise of personas as a UX design approach since shortly after their introduction. While the optimal approach to creating and employing personas is still evolving—thanks to more useful data becoming available to design teams and new project-management methods—their usefulness has not yet diminished. If anything, personas have become even more useful because they put a human face on aggregated data and foster a user-centered design approach even within the context of efficiency-driven development processes." (Paul Bryan a.k.a. @paulbryan ~ UXmatters) User experience 2013-01-21T10:02:35+01:00 Personas going social. Next up: Mobinas. "Creating Socionas seeks to address two questions: What do design teams need to understand about the social to develop products and services that delight users? And how can they build this understanding under the constraints of new product development practice?" (Carolien Postma ~ Delft University of Technology IDStudiolab) Personas 2012-11-07T17:15:18+01:00 Personas as the silver bullet to guarantee empathy? "Content strategy isn't really a discipline but a defined approach to handling an organization's content consistently across departments and channels. It can only be effective if it becomes ubiquitous to the processes and procedures that already exist within business - communications, public relations, customer service, marketing, graphic design, IT, etc. While the defined strategy may be about content, the tactics by which we achieve our content goals are really about people. Who are we publishing content for? How will they interact with the content we present? How do they define relevancy? What is meaningful and engaging to them? Borrowing a tool that user experience and interaction designers have used for years, personas are a powerful way to not only create and implement a sound content strategy, but to facilitate its adoption by everyone in the organization." (Kristina Mausser a.k.a. @krismausser ~ Follow the UX Leader) Content strategy 2012-04-10T16:30:38+01:00 Personas are great for any UX field, content strategy included. "The most popular content strategy tools borrow from the discipline of information architecture, but there is one invaluable tool that is imperative to the process of strategy and implementation of tactics that we can thank our user experience cousins for: personas." (Kristina Mausser a.k.a. @krismausser ~ Johnny Holland Magazine) Personas 2012-02-16T21:15:16+01:00 "Knowing who will use your software is important to the software development process. Having the end user in mind helps you develop features that fit the user's needs. And, figuring out your end user, as Jeff Patton reveals, is indeed easy. In this column, Jeff details stereotypes to avoid, questions to ask, and how to implement this pragmatic persona in your development process." (Jeff Patton ~ StickyMinds) Personas 2011-01-18T11:38:18+01:00 "(...) although demographics and task analysis play an important part in persona creation, personas are more than just a collection of user profiles and groups. You should make them as real as you can. They should embody all the human attributes you'd expect to find in your users. For example, they could be moody, very task oriented, work in a specific type of environment, or even hate the idea of referring to documentation unless they are absolutely compelled to do so." (Niranjan Jahagirdar and Arun Joseph Martin ~ UXmatters.com) Personas 2010-10-19T09:21:09+01:00 "If we are going to begin to address these issues, we need to get at the root of the problem—our empathetic understanding of our users. Having empathy for users and understanding their needs doesn't come from reading words on a page. It doesn’t come from statistical analysis of demographics either. It comes from truly embodying and experiencing the character of a persona, so it becomes ingrained emotionally and physically in our memories. Actors understand this. From the time Stanislavski began teaching Method Acting - a process of transformation in which actors begin to take on the true nature of a character - actors have referred to this moment when they realize a character's emotional memory and have truly become the character as the moment of embodiment." (Traci Lepore ~ UXmatters) Personas 2010-08-23T10:23:21+01:00 "Persona design falls far short of its potential without scenario design and walkthroughs. Only putting the personas into action bridges the contexts of use and implementation." (Design Crux) Personas 2010-07-08T11:22:19+01:00 "This is by far the nerdiest episode we ever did, so fasten your seat belts. In his session at UXcamp, Tom said: "Personas – love 'em or hate 'em – you can't not use 'em. Either you have zombies, or you have living ones." In this recording of his session he talks about different kinds of zombies like Mirror Personas, Undead Personas, Unicorn Personas or Stupid User Personas. He gives advice on how to avoid these fellas and how to make good use of living personas during a project. As a bonus, Tom explains why 37signals doesn't need personas at all." (UX Café) User experience 2010-06-22T13:39:54+01:00 "Grasping complex information needs and uses can indeed be daunting. One powerful design tool, personas, can help make sense of these needs and provide a framework for building Intranets that will satisfy a variety of needs. Effectively developed and used, personas enable Intranet teams to hone in on user needs and build interfaces and user experiences that end-user audiences can and will use." (McQueen Consulting) Personas 2010-06-08T13:07:04+01:00 "A lot of work goes into creating personas, and I was delighted to discover this innovative way in which the team carried forward the benefits of that work into the final product, where users could benefit from it as well. The personas also provide a rich form of user experience by portraying typical practices for effectively using the portal. I recommend that other UX designers consider applying personas in this way—initially using these user research artifacts during design, then incorporating them into products as user assistance and navigation aids." (Mike Hughes ~ UXmatters) Personas 2010-06-07T09:28:30+01:00 "In this installment, we took somewhat detailed tour of personas. First, we covered how to make them—the processes and techniques involved in developing, validating, and maturing the personas themselves, which has a big benefit to the whole team involved in getting a much better understanding of whom the solution is being developed for. Then we discussed some different uses of personas, how not to use them, as well as how to—chiefly to gain empathy to inform what and how you build so that it makes sense for your target audience as well as a valuable communication tool to keep team members on the same page, speaking the same language, and collaborating in terms of people rather than in terms of technical or hierarchical terms." (Dr. Charles B. Kreitzberg and Ambrose Little) Personas 2010-04-02T14:43:58+01:00 "Personas are a flexible and powerful tool for user researchers. They're also one of the most misunderstood. When done well, they ensure the team focuses on the needs and delights of their users. Like other effective user research techniques, personas deliver confidence and insights to the team. Personas help the team make important design decisions with a thorough understanding of who the users are, what they need, and when they need it." (Jared Spool) Personas 2010-02-18T09:25:18+01:00