Sarah Klein
10/17/2016 09:11:08 pm
In Modeling Users: Personas to Goals by Cooper et al, the authors discuss the power of user personas as a tool in analyzing, synthesizing, and communicating research both within and beyond the design team. Personas are compared to other models such as workflow diagrams, artifact models, and physical models. Furthermore, the authors suggest a structured process through which to develop personas to ensure that personas are detailed yet synthesized and do not fall prey to pitfalls such as being illustrative of the elastic user, self-referential design, or edge cases.
Kevin
10/17/2016 09:19:58 pm
I feel like well-versing oneself in creating User Personas is a good way to increase one’s own empathy, because it makes you think about people in a deeper sense. You cannot look at surface level qualities, but you have to dive into what they say and what they do in order to find deeper truths about that person, truths about what drives them and motivates them. You must leave all assumptions behind and really pay attention.
Amanda Johnson
10/17/2016 09:48:52 pm
In Modeling Users: Personas to Goals, Cooper et al. describe the value in making personas for developing a “precise way of thinking and communicating about how groups of users behave, how they think, what they want to accomplish, and why.” I had heard the term personas used in a variety of contexts before reading this paper, and there were a lot of misconceptions I had that Cooper et al. were able to unpack. One of them was that personas were merely fabricated representations of people designers used throughout the design process. In fact, Cooper et al. goes into great detail to clarify this point stating, “Personas developed by drawing on inadequate research (or synthesized with insufficient empathy and sensitivity to interview subjects) run the risk of degrading to caricatures. Personas must be developed and treated with dignity and respect for the people they represent. If the designer doesn’t respect his persona nobody else will either.”
Stephanie Liao
10/17/2016 09:55:56 pm
This chapter from About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design pushes for the use of personas around designs of products. We’ve seen the use of modeling to help us analyze the data, but this chapter goes into detail about how we can apply models to represent the important needs to keep in mind while designing in the form of personas.
Jordan Marks
10/17/2016 10:11:29 pm
I appreciated the Cooper article as an approachable explanation of the purpose of personas, an instructive guide to creating these personas, and some defense of personas as design models. The idea of creating personas as a metric against which to measure your design seemed very valuable to me, particularly to avoid self-referential design and designing to edge cases. The car design example made a lot of sense to me when thinking about the value of these personas and the importance of looking at different goals. Although at a base level their car needs are only a means of transit, the different people and activities that the cars support mean that different people have very different goals from the cars.
Miki Nobumori
10/17/2016 10:19:44 pm
In the excerpt from About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Cooper el al, the authors discuss the method and values of modeling users through personas. Personas are archetypes of real users, and are constructed from user behaviors and motivations gathered during research.These personas become critical tools for designing and developing products, as it provides a way for designers to understand users’ goals, ideate, and finally validate design concepts. The authors emphasize that in order for these personas to be effective, the process of identifying patterns in user behavior and determining how to assemble them must be done thoroughly and carefully. Because personas are so powerful and serves multiple purposes for not just designers but stakeholders and developers as well, it’s important that the representations focus around the real target user and is free of misconceptions that may lead to pitfalls. I agree with the authors on the value of care one should put when giving them realistic characteristics to avoid giving any self-referential hints.
Eunsol Byun
10/17/2016 10:33:19 pm
The reading described making personas and setting the user goals in details.
Bria Best
10/17/2016 10:45:07 pm
Creating user personas is extremely beneficial tool for a design team to create a common understanding of the user and build empathy towards a user’s needs and frustrations. Personas help a design team understand a user framed within a narrative therefore evaluating context and opportunity cost. Further, personas also keep the design team accountable to ensure that they are truly meeting the needs of their user through the design process.
Cory Bird
10/17/2016 11:15:22 pm
In chapter three of About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, the authors discuss personas and their practical implications. The umbrella term “model” is introduced and described as a way to physically represent complex phenomena. The article mentions that, “Good models emphasize the salient features of the structures and relationships they represent and de-emphasize the less significant details.” I found this sentence to be very insightful and thought it should certainly be kept in mind when designing relevant models; I believe it is a factor that is often overlooked when constructing useful models.
Annie Kim
10/18/2016 01:32:55 am
Personas are descriptive models of users. In interaction design, they provide a composite view of users based on observed behavioral patterns, as opposed to basic stereotypes and generalizations. They require a considerable amount of research and thorough observation.
Lily Kim
10/18/2016 03:22:59 am
Chapter three of About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design described the importance of making personas. The use of Personas were described as a tool to help determine the use of the product, aid with the communication of ideas, build design consensus, reiterate commitment to the design, measure effectiveness and contribute to further development of the product. The reading presented the creation of personas as effective tools to aid in the design process. Personas provide a overview of potential users and the different uses of the product based on observed patterns and are not supposed to fuel stereotypes and generalizations but rather, be specific to the behaviors of observed groups. I thought it was important to note that the “average human” does not exist. This requires designers to narrow down the targeted audience to a user that best captures needs for a larger group.
Tom Garncarz
10/18/2016 08:51:16 am
The Cooper reading about Personas gives a great overview of both the processes that go into developing effective user personas and the advantages that they pose to one's design. Because personas work at a certain level of abstraction, they afford us as designers the ability to understand our users at a broader and more comprehensive view, without running into the danger of viewing users as a set of bullet points to be satisfied. Keeping this sense of empathy engaged is obviously very important in user-centered design, and perhaps even more so in the context of learning media, where the user is often in need of more guidance than are users in other domains.
Charleen Yang
10/18/2016 09:32:33 am
In the reading of MODELING USERS: Personas & Goals, authors explains why personas are important, how to create useful personas, and what the counterargument of personas is. Personas, as a design tool, summarize mindset, motivation, behaviors, and different stage of goals held by key stakeholders This can help the designer to ideate new product and service and validate the concept after it is finished. The authors also put more focus on defining goals for the persona. In their opinion, goals are the motivation for their behaviors.
Natalya Buchwald
10/18/2016 10:42:53 am
I enjoyed the personas chapter in "About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design." I personally needed a description of the connection between user studies and personas. I specifically needed a guide on how to extend insights found in interviews to a persona. Cooper gave an overview of methods and best practices of persona construction. Creating personas require data from directed research (user studies, etc). Cooper gives a guide of creating personas to including fully defining user needs and wants. Ultimately, these needs and wants will help designers find distinct user goals. These goals are what personas are based upon. Before reaching and defining goals, designers must synthesize data (including user environment, skills, problems, experience, and background). After synthesis, designers can check and sift through redundancies. Ultimately, the chapter ends with the final step of creating descriptions of a "persona." These personas must encapsulate all the synthesize data and the found goals and motivations.
Pei Lin
10/26/2016 11:28:46 am
In the reading of Modeling Users: Personas & Goals, the author provides an overview of personas, are a technique common in user experience (UX) research and design used to present a fictional portrait of a type of user, based on research. The article not only articulates the promises of personas, but it also points out some common mistakes. Those are very important advice for making personas. Comments are closed.
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