It’s pretty tough to design a great user experience if you don’t know the target audience. When faced with this problem, well-equipped UX designers commonly reach into their toolboxes and pull out: the persona. Personas draw upon the power of narrative and storytelling to shine a bright light on the elusive “user.” They’re especially effective…
A few days ago, I hosted a web seminar about personas for the folks at Thomson Scientific. Interest has grown there after a successful introduction to personas, which I’m told were a useful resource during their redesign of the ISI Web of Knowledge. This got me thinking: I’ve already posted some information about personas here…
Despite a wide-ranging interest in personas (aka user profiles) by web and software designers, concrete examples of actual personas are surprisingly hard to find. So I’m happy to contribute an example here, from a chapter I wrote in the book User-Centered Design Stories. Click the thumbnails below for full-sized images, or download a printable PDF….
In a few days, the UPA 2007 conference will kick off in Austin, Texas. It’s here that many people will get their first glimpse of User-Centered Design Stories: Real-World UCD Case Studies, a new book by Carol Righi and Janice James. Carol and Janice have assembled an impressive collection of real-world case studies from 22…