| So
we have the Owner's functional requirements, the desired preferences
and the constraints within which the final design must exist. Over
the last year at the site, there have been several techniques discussed
in book reviews. So now it's time to put it into practice.
First
we need to take a look at who uses the site. How do we get that
information?
Well
we have access to the site logs. That tells us the IP names of machines
visiting the site and we also know what pages are being read and
when. In some cases we know whether they arrive from Search engines
and we know whether they come in by the front door. However, this
actually tells us very little about the User or their Goals.
We
also have the direct feedback from email. Surely this is a great
help. Well yes and no. We must ask whether the emailers truly represent
the community who visit the site. They are the minority. It's the
silent majority that are of real interest. The emailers fall into
two neat categories: those whom I know personally or professionally;
and those who come in with 101 type questions and go away never
to be heard of again. So email correspondence was not the answer.
The
answer lay with Personas [Cooper 99] (aka User Profiles [Fleming
99]). So I decided to develop some. For each Persona definition,
we can look at the goals that Persona might have.
Walter,
an HF/HCI post-grad student
Walter
has only worked in industry for one summer internship. He didn't
get any real work to do or it was only hacking C++ code for some
back end interface. He is currently doing his literature review
and has turned to usenet and deja.com for suggestions. He found
uidesign.net through a link from my tagline.
Walter
needs to find material that can be classified as "State of
the Art" and he needs to know if he's missing anything. He
finds the book reviews (or at least some of them) useful. He browses
the White Papers and cherry picks those with novel Interaction material.
Diane,
an Undergrad CS student with a term paper on HCI to submit by Friday
Diane
is having a lousy year. Her boyfriend is cheating on her, her allowance
is almost done for this month, her roommates are real messy and
her pet cat got sick. She works evenings to supplement her allowance
and parties when she is not working. She doesn't have time to do
homework. Term papers have to be thrown together over lunch, just
before their due date.
Diane
hits uidesign.net from AltaVista search engine. She arrives
on a book review but really needs a White Paper to plagiarise. She
needs to see a list of available papers and get a quick grasp of
the content. She selects a paper, saves it to disk and starts editing.
Later
Diane's lecturer recognises that the work can't possibly be her
own but he isn't too sure where it came from.
Gary,
Windows GUI Developer in a big Insurance Firm's IT Division
Gary
stands out from his immediate colleagues as a visionary. Someone
who cares a little bit more than simply when his paycheck will arrive.
Gary wants to do a better job. He knows his boss is related to Dilbert's
boss and the only way the department's output will improve is if
he makes it happen in his own time. He reads a few web sites periodically
and tries to improve his knowledge. He doesn't have time to read
books but he does own a few weighty tombs on Windows APIs which
he references when required. Currently, Gary doesn't know much about
UML but he is keen to learn that too. It might just be his passport
to a better position elsewhere. Gary found UIDesign.net from usenet.
Gary bookmarked the links page. He passes through occasionally looking
for other sites.
Gary
needs to read stuff which makes his job easier. He wants advice
on menus, grouping fields, code construction, notification mechanisms,
advice on when to use a widget and what alternatives there might
be. He needs to know stuff about APIs and stuff about UML and software
development processes. He comes in by the links page, occassionally
he might stay but more often he just wants to choose a link and
surf off somewhere else.
Graham,
Program Manager at esiteforyou.com
Graham
graduated in Art and Communication. His hobby interest in Graphic
Design and his Apple Mac experience, got him a job as a Graphic
Artist at esiteforyou.com while it was still a small startup called
Design Partners. The sudden explosion in eCommerce and the change
in the business name saw huge growth and VC investors. Graham is
now head of a whole eCommerce web team. He still knows a lot about
Graphic Design but is out of his depth in many other areas of design
and software development. He found uidesign.net from a Search
Engine and bookmarked it. He visits occasionally as he does several
other sites. His interest is in improved usability and better design.
Graham
needs to see what's new. If something interests him then he may
choose to read it, otherwise he doesn't want his time wasted and
will move on to something else somewhere else.
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