Review: The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design

The Persona Lifecycle describes the value of personas, and offers detailed techniques and tools to conceive, create, communicate, and use personas to create [great] product designs. John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin provide examples, samples, and illustrations for persona practitioners to imitate and model. It is important to emphasize that the use of personas is a method that compliments other user-centered design techniques, including user testing, scenario-based design, and cognitive walkthroughs.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design>Personas

Persona-Based Documentation

InfoSourcing's Persona based documentation approach allows our technical writers to prioritize their writing tasks and document the product to end users, who is going to use the product ..."

Sarjapur, Harsha. Info Sourcing (2005). Resources>Documentation>User Centered Design>Personas

Personas and Diversity

As a company recognized by a number of publications and organizations for its ongoing commitment to a diverse workforce, Wachovia promotes diversity as a business imperative critical to the company's success. On Wachovia's web properties, the company tries to appeal to diverse segments through images of people of different races, ethnicities, and ages, reflecting the company's customer base. However, a recent usability test revealed that working off such demographics alone is not enough to translate diversity, and that building personas is the key to creating, not just representation, but relevancy.

Zhou, Yun and Cliff Anderson. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Personas

Personas and the Customer Decision-Making Process

With this case study I want to show how our team used the concept of personas - fictional, representative user archetypes - and the customer decision-making process model in a project, in order to capture the nature of customers and their needs and concerns as they progress through the customer decision-making process.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2004). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

Personas and the Technical Communicator

What's the problem with personas? They're a new concept to many communicators, and thus sufficiently unfamiliar to make them difficult to use. To help solve this problem, I developed a couple of personas to show you how it's done, and illustrate their implications for documentation.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>TC>User Centered Design>Personas

Personas, Goals, and Emotional Design

When Don Norman's most recent book, Emotional Design, hit the shelves in early 2004, it sent a ripple through the user experience world. Norman introduced the idea that product design should address three different levels of cognitive and emotional processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. This idea seemed like old news to some and a revelation to others in the UX community. In either case, Norman's ideas, based on years of cognitive research, provide an articulated structure for modeling user responses to product and brand and a rational context for many intuitions long held by professional designers.

Reimann, Robert. UXmatters (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Emotions>Personas

Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development: An Infrastructure for Engagement  

The design of commercial products that are intended to serve millions of people has been a challenge for collaborative approaches. The creation and use of fictional users, concrete representations commonly referred to as 'personas', is a relatively new interaction design technique. It is not without problems and can be used inappropriately, but based on experience and analysis it has extraordinary potential. Not only can it be a powerful tool for true participation in design, it also forces designers to consider social and political aspects of design that otherwise often go unexamined.

Grudin, Jonathan and John Pruitt. Microsoft (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Usability>Personas

Personas: Focusing on Getting the Design Right

The individual components of a persona are described and an example persona relating to the SecureCam case study is provided.

Meighan, Fiona. Apogee (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

Personas: Practice and Theory  

' Personas' is an interaction design technique with considerable potential for software product development. In three years of use, our colleagues and we have extended Alan Cooperís technique to make Personas a powerful complement to other usability methods. After describing and illustrating our approach, we outline the psychological theory that explains why Personas are more engaging than design based primarily on scenarios. As Cooper and others have observed, Personas can engage team members very effectively. They also provide a conduit for conveying a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data, and focus attention on aspects of design and use that other methods do not.

Pruitt, John and Jonathan Grudin. Microsoft (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

Podcasting for User-Centered Design

This summer marks the anniversary of initial recordings of Design Critique: Products for People with Tim & Tom, a podcast devoted to informing listeners about the advantages of User-Centered Design (UCD). I hope this article may encourage the creation of other podcasts related to UCD theory and practice. Our vision of doing a UCD-related podcast was that an informal, occasionally humorous show combining consumer product critiques, interviews with user experience professionals, and occasional method discussions might fill a void I perceived in the podcasting world. Sometimes the absence of a thing may imply more than its presence would, and I was concerned that this new medium didn't seem to have many regular shows devoted to what user experience professionals can offer the world. A maturing, innovative field ought to be represented in a maturing, innovative medium.

Keirnan, Timothy. Usability Professionals Association (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>Streaming>Podcasting

The Politics and Practices of Interface Design

This studio/seminar course will contribute to students' practical and theoretical knowledge of user-centered interface design. In the move from Engineering English to Technical Communication, technical communicators increasingly work with and within computer interfaces, as content developers, as human-factors and usability experts, and as information designers. This course examines both the work of interface design, focused on web and multimedia interfaces, and the theory of such work, particularly where it intersects with critical and cultural theory. We'll be looking at the development of user-centered and participatory design (Johnson, Ehn, Winograd), critical theories of technology (Foucault, Feinberg), and design strategies for critiquing or politicizing design (Laurel, Kolko).

Carter, Kellie Rae. Wayne State University (2004). Academic>Courses>User Interface>User Centered Design

Power to the People

Relentlessly simple solutions to complex design problems can be the difference between an average experience and a great one. D. Keith Robinson reminds web designers and developers that ease of use is more important than technological sophistication.

Robinson, D. Keith. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

Practicing Persona Development: an In-House Case Study  

As Technical Communicators, many of us were initiated into this industry with the oft-cited cliche, 'know thy audience.' But what does this really mean? To what extent must we 'know' our audience in order to deliver effective information products? The critical questions are, 'what tools and means can I use to sufficiently understand the needs of my audience? Rather than relying on the directives of Engineering and Marketing, how can I discover the true needs of my audience and develop a user-centered design? And how do I hone my skills at gathering and applying this crucial data?' One of the emerging trends in Technical Communications is to develop user 'personas' as a design tool. This paper presents 'real-world' advice and 'best practices' on using the persona methodology to design information products.

Leritz-Higgins, Sarah E. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas

Preference Does Not Equal Performance

People will swear up and down that they love a particular product. They will tell you that the colors are right, the size is perfect, and the information is exactly what they needed. However, until you watch and test users you will not see how well the product works. You will not find out if they really would continue using the product, in the right amount, at the right time, under the conditions you expected. People have a funny way of deciding when, where and how they will using something.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2000). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

A Preliminary Report on Two Pilot Readability/Usability Studies  

Companies are beginning to conduct readability studies to determine how to provide customers with usable sites. Results have been inconclusive, conflicting, and often contradicting results of printed text studies. To discover how users use web sites, two pilot studies were designed to examine users, their purposes, and their reading processes. Many results parallel those of previous studies. In addition, new results indicate we need to examine several new variables, including amount of usage, site-specific knowledge, conventionalization, print bias, gender and age.

Boiarsky, Carolyn. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Preparing for User Research Interviews: Seven Things to Remember

Interviewing is an artful skill that is at the core of a wide variety of research methods in user-centered design, including stakeholder interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and focus groups. Consequently, a researcher’s skill in conducting interviews has a direct impact on the quality and accuracy of research findings and subsequent decisions about design. Skilled interviewers can conduct interviews that uncover the most important elements of a participant’s perspective on a task or a product in a manner that does not introduce interviewer bias. Companies hire user researchers and user-centered designers because they possess this very ability.

Hawley, Michael. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Interviewing>Usability>User Centered Design

The Principle of Least Astonishment

When computers are at their most usable, we don't even notice them; when they are at their least, they astonish us. Here, Peter explores the Principle of Least Astonishment, and how it can help you develop better interfaces.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2001). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

Printing the Web

Despite predictions to the contrary, it doesn't seem that the advent of networked information sharing has reduced human consumption of paper. In fact, given the amount of printouts modern offices and homes produce, one is inclined to say that even more paper is generated today than ever before.

Kalbach, James. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design

Profiling Users from Around the World  

This full-day, post-conference workshop provides the tools and methods for answering the question, 'How and why do the information needs of a user from one country differ from those of a user in a different country?' In a highly interactive setting, explore the cultural biases you bring to technical communication with your peers who may or may not share your cultural context. Consider ways of creating world-ready information products that can be customized for any cultural context (localization) or standardized for world distribution (globalization).

Hoft, Nancy L. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>User Centered Design>International

Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design

The Promised Land of Prototyping

While some may claim that prototyping isn't one of the wonders of the world, it's definitely a wonder of web and software development. It can help us design better products and overcome many of the hurdles that tend to surface during a development process.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Prototyping

The Psychology of Visualization

A brick red wall, then, is one of this consumer's anchor points, and allows him to better visualize a piece of furniture in his own home. This is what we mean when we tout the psychology of visualization.

Hanson, Steve. Hanson (2003). Design>User Centered Design

Quality and the Consumer Experience: Methods of Collecting Data  

Smart reviews several user-centered methods technical communicators can use to gather information for designing and improving customers' experience with documentation.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods

Quality for Customers' Sake

Executives as well as customers demand quality from technical communicators. However, the requirements of both groups seem hard to combine: Executives want quality to be achieved inside the company by applying quality standards without causing any delay or additional costs. Establishing customer-based quality, on the other hand, usually demands extra money and extra time. Nevertheless both demands can and should be utilized for developing a user-oriented quality system.

Bock, Gabriele. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>User Centered Design>Quality

Reader-Centered Documentation Provides the Necessary Context    

A features-based approach to documentation is appropriate for reference manuals, where the goal is to provide information on something the reader already knows. This article explores how to meet the needs of the reader when providing documentation for user manuals.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2007). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design