Archive for July, 2011
Persona Abuse in User Interface Design
Posted by Kayla in user interface design on July 15, 2011
Personas in User Experience Design
Personas in User Experience design should always be referred to by name as if they are real people. If you start talking about them and identifying them by their role, you are no longer doing persona-based user interface design!
Back when Alan Cooper first wrote, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, I had an opportunity to work with his agency. I brought them in to help me on a project for a company called Estamp.
In a nutshell, persona-based design means you’re designing for real people. Cooper’s methods have you coming up with specific users with names, occupations, desires, goals, motivations, education, etc.
Using personas is supposed to get the design team thinking about real people rather than theoretical “users.” Every design decision should be brought back to Susan, Bill, Sara, or John. There are no generic “users.”
Curiously, when used well, this method can result in some brilliant design. By designing for specific people, theoretical users end up happier. (Go figure!)
Long ago, I tried to introduce persona based design to various companies, and it was met with skepticism and it was nearly impossible to get buy-in.
Now? Persona based design is a big buzzword. Most companies want it. And many of them even think they’re doing it!
Yet what I’ve seen is that personas creep back to theoretical users, no matter how much effort is put in to preventing that from happening. But instead of the user being called a user, they end up named by their demographic or occupation or some related bit of information.
I’m not sure this buys you anything beyond designing for a theoretical user.
OTOH, If you’re doing role-based design, and you’ve given a half thought to what the persona would be like, perhaps you’re getting some of the benefit of persona-based design.
Do you use persona-based design? Do your personas become vibrant, living, breathing folks? Or do they creep back to theoretical users?
Google+ is Not Facebook
Posted by Kayla in Internet Communities, social media, Uncategorized on July 12, 2011
I’ve been trying to articulate all of the reasons why I’m excited about G+ and why it’s different than anything else that’s out there. On the surface, it looks a lot like FB. If you dig deeper, it seems to be a bit like Twitter. But it’s actually better than either or both combined. Here’s why.
1. The security model is more comfortable. Work, friends, children can all be compartmentalized. If I trust my friends, and I see a stream is “Limited” I can make assumptions about who can and can’t see that stream. And I can be certain that my bf’s daughter, for example, won’t accidentally end up with a bawdy or personal comment in her stream. I can’t count on that in FB. I can only lock down my own threads and I can’t tell if someone else’s thread is locked down.
2. If you’re interested in a topic or a certain kind of person, you can find them and join in. This isn’t as easy as it should be yet, but I’m sure the King of Search will make it better.
3. Right now, perhaps due to being in beta, the signal-noise ratio is excellent. Though there are a lot of interesting meta-streams about “what is this”, “how to”, that will probably eventually die down. It also might be more interesting because the teens aren’t here yet. 
and early adopters tend to be geeky. And geeks are more interesting than non-geeks. (ha!)
4. Length of posts. FB and Twitter lock you down pretty hard and that pulls for fluff. There isn’t an easy way to have genuine conversation on those mediums.
5. Persistence! You can follow the technorati on Twitter, but good luck really engaging. Because the threads disappear so fast, there isn’t much opportunity for real engagement. You can even follow people who are tweeting interesting things. But the fragility of the message means that engagement is nearly impossible. Twitter mostly ends up like a bunch of people in a room all talking to themselves, and in that way, it’s not genuinely social.
Site Map
6. The biggest win of all. When you “share” the original attribution is always kept.
So if I see cool stuff is coming from +Alida Brandenburg (who has posted cool stuff), and I don’t know her, (and I don’t), I may go check her out and put her in my “Following”, (which I’ve done.)
Now if I start to comment in her streams, perhaps we actually, genuinely get to know each other.
This takes “social media” to what it always should have been, and yet, it’s never been accomplished until now.
It’s brilliant! And I think G+ has hit it out of the ballpark.