Monday, November 8, 2004

"The Don" on personas Don Norman writes about using personas in product design: Personas: Empathetic Focus. "Do Personas have to be accurate? Do they require a large body of research? No, I conclude. The Personas must indeed reflect the target group for the design team, but that is about all.  . ." (Donald Norman) - courtesy of elearningpost [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] While Don doesn't explicitly describe using personas for task analysis, I think that's the background usage; in fact, he describes use cases involving each persona described. More interesting to me is this statement: Design is in many ways an act of communication (one of these days, Real-Soon-Now, I will finish and post my essay on this topic), but in order to communicate effectively, the designer must have a clear cohesive, understandable image of the product being designed and the user of the product must be able to understand that communication. Well, I can't wait for that essay from Don, because he's said what I have been saying, given the opportunity: when it comes to the various roles and titles involved in product design and development, we're all just trying to communicate. Whether you're an interface designer, a graphic designer, a Web developer, an information architect, or a technical writer, the job is to communicate with the user (customer, client, team). We use different tools and methods, but communication is the goal. 1:39:55 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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