User Persona Phase
From GSLIS IA Project
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[edit] User Persona Phase
Team leaders: Margaret Adams and Whitney Wilson
Current phase status:
User Personas have been posted on the wiki. Helping out on Paper Prototyping phase.
[edit] What are User Personas?
User Personas are descriptions of the target users or stakeholders of the GSLIS sites http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/ and http://my.simmons.edu/gslis/.
The main stakeholders for this site would be prospective students, competing library school programs, and the general public and media, and GSLIS alumni who can access a separate alumni web site from this page. Also, current students, faculty and staff can access the Simmons College Intranet from this site.
[edit] Why do we develop User Personas?
The task specific to the user persona phase of the project is to develop no more than five user personas representing the target users or stakeholders of the GSLIS sites
The initial step in developing the user personas is to identify the scope and stakeholders or audiences for each site. Personas or realistic, detailed, fictional descriptions of a web site’s target users can help information architects make informed decisions about web site design based on user needs and behaviors. In order to develop useful personas, we must first learn about user needs, their ways of thinking and grouping information, their expectations from both GSLIS sites, as well as their technology knowledge level and Web experience. Once we have data related to these areas, we can construct user personas based on characteristics consistent with the main user groups we have identified.
[edit] How do we develop User Personas?
Surveys and individual interviews are two tools which will enable the IA team to discern user characteristics, needs, and information seeking behaviors. In order to collect data about the users the User Persona team will need to complete the following tasks:
- Design tools. Ideally, these tools would be drafted, then pre-tested and revised before there use as reliable means of data collection. In the user persona phase of the study, emphasis will be placed on formulating questions and materials to guide individual interviews of each stakeholder group. At a later date, we hope to make an on-line survey tool available to the stakeholder groups in order to receive additional feedback from a larger number of users.
- Subjects from each of the identified stakeholder groups will be recruited for participation in the study. While we realize that not all groups will be equally represented, representative sampling numbers from each group will be sought out. It is our hope to interview ten subjects from each of the five stakeholder groups we have identified: prospective students, current students, faculty and staff, alumni, and the media.
- The survey will be administered and the interviews conducted in order to collect data about user needs and information seeking behaviors.
- Interviewers will enter their collected data into the master IA Project Interview spreadsheet.
- The collected data will be compiled and analyzed noting the commonalities among users. Likenesses will be groups together. Personas will be developed. The user personas should include a name, and possibly picture, basic demographic information, along with user goals and tasks with relation to the site. Once developed, the user personas will serve as representations for the larger user groups served by the GSLIS Web sites. Specifically, the user personas will enable the Information Architecture Team to share specific, consistent understandings of various audience groups the Web sites aim to reach.
The proposal and execution of this study involves the use of human subjects for study. Therefore, the involvement of the Institutional Review Board at Simmons College is necessary. The IRB has been contacted and their directives followed in the execution of the study.
[edit] What will developing User Personas do for the site?
The published personas will serve as a useful tool for the redesign of the GSLIS web sites. As explained on the Usability.gov web site, user personas will serve as:
- a point of focus for the team
- a manageable number of cases representing a large number of users
- a springboard to go beyond what users ask for to focus on what they will actually use
- a means of prioritizing design efforts to serve user needs
- a means of sorting out design disagreements by focusing on user needs.
[edit] Where are we now?
- The User Personas are available for viewing on the User Persona Phase page (see below) and the Presentations page.
[edit] Five Final User Personas
Click here to see the IA Project User Personas
[edit] How we involved the user community
A survey based on the questions from the stakeholder interviews was used for the entire Simmons community to complete. Stakeholder Survey
