Re: Creating Personas to Enhance GNOME's UX

  Hi all - this is a topic near and dear to my heart so please forgive 
the verbose answer.

Up front I should say that I think personas are a key component of good 
UX, and without some kind of user definition you're going to run into 
problems, including the elastic user problem.  Which typically can lead 
to scope creep, and project delays, and terrible, terrible things.  
Personas can help - in the right situation.

I think personas are a very "modern" UX deliverable, but they're not 
well used in industry, to be honest, and even less so in Open Source 
projects (strictly from my experience so far).  Many development shops 
claim to want them, and then aren't sure what to do with them once they 
have them.   All they really wanted was a better understanding of their 
users and their needs, and they aren't sure how personas gets them that 
once they have them in their hands. This problem is compounded by the 
fact that not everyone agrees on what personas are, nor what they should 
contain.

If we're creating generic Gnome personas, how will they be used?  Are we 
looking for a tool that helps us publicize and market Gnome?  If they're 
intended to capture end user behaviour and needs - which Gnome project 
will be using them?  If we create them and nobody uses them, is that 
OK?  If someone uses them, we really should make sure they're as useful 
as possible to those people.  If we make them too generic then they will 
simply be ignored as being unhelpful and unspecific.


We can consider the existing personas that have been drafted/created in 
various Gnome projects [1, 2, 3, 4] and ask how we can improve upon them 
(or even use them).  Or look at some existing user observations [5] and 
ask how they were used, and how to use them more.

These are just some of the thoughts popping into my head.

In this case it looks like there is a desire to better understand the 
general Gnome user population.  I'd suggest trying to focus the personas 
on a market approach, rather than a software tool approach, as it seems 
like they'll most likely be used as marketing tools.  Or perhaps take 
this opportunity to collect data on users and present it in a data-rich 
way, rather than as stereotypical users.

If we're able to do a large dump of user data I'd love to look at some 
ideas I was throwing around back in the early days of Gnome Shell [6] - 
taking a look at existing Gnome desktops, how they're configured, and 
how they're modified from the default setup  There's a link on that page 
to a presentation done at MIX09 by Microsoft [7] on how they gathered 
data to retool the Windows taskbar for Windows 7.  I think having this 
kind of data would be greatly valuable for designers and usability 
analysts alike in trying to figure out how to improve the user's experience.

Although on second thought the panels all go away with the next version 
of Gnome, so this might require more thought in terms of what exactly we 
want to gather data on.

Kirk




[1] Banter personas: http://live.gnome.org/Banter/Design/Personas
[2] Orca personas: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/Specification/Personas
[3] Gnome web personas: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/WebPersonas
[4] UTS personas: http://live.gnome.org/UTSPersonas
[5] GnomeShell user observations: 
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UserObservationData
[6] Gnome Shell user analysis ideas: 
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UserResearch
[7] Windows 7 user investigation video: 
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C26F (Silverlight required of course 
(boo!))



On 10/30/2010 09:29 PM, Allan Caeg wrote:
> I'll add some more things to ask based on what I learned from my 
> profession.
>
> Let's also ask them what they do when they're not using the computer, 
> what the usual scenarios in their lives are (being at work, playing 
> with their kids, ), types of computers where they use GNOME (netbook, 
> desktop, etc), what distro they use, and why they use GNOME.
>
> These would help us characterize their mental models and how they 
> experience GNOME.
>
> Comments?
>
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Allan Caeg <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>     Hello,
>
>     Defining personas is very important for User-Centered Design. In
>     fact, it should be one of the first activities needed to build a
>     system with good UX, based on JJG's Elements of User Experience.
>     We need to know who we're designing for before we design, right?
>
>     There's an ongoing effort for this, but it's not gaining much
>     traction. Fortunately, GNOME.Asia is interested in helping out by
>     doing research in Asia. I hope you can help us do research in
>     other areas. We also found this GNOME Marketing User Survey
>     <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/SurveyUsers> effort. We can
>     build on this existing work if it's fit.
>
>     Let's start by surveying GNOME users about their demographics,
>     computing habits, what they use GNOME for, and how much they use
>     GNOME. Would that do? If so, let's draft the questionnaire :)
>
>     -- 
>     Regards,
>     Allan
>     http://www.google.com/profiles/allancaeg#about
>     <http://www.google.com/profiles/AllanCaeg>
>     +63 918 948 2520
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Regards,
> Allan
> http://www.google.com/profiles/allancaeg#about 
> <http://www.google.com/profiles/AllanCaeg>
> +63 918 948 2520
>

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