Personas - User Focused Design

Contending that people view each other as individuals, not classifiable types in a segmented society, this volume explains a versatile concept of user-focused design, solidly backed by research, and helpful in IT product design as much as character-led movies.

People relate to other people, not to simplified types or segments. This is the concept that underpins this book. Personas, a user centered design methodology covers topics from interaction design within IT, through to issues surrounding product design, communication, and marketing.

Project developers need to understand how users approach their products from the product's infancy, and regardless of what the product might be. Developers should be able to describe the user of the product via vivid depictions, as if they with their different attitudes, desires and habits were already using the product. In doing so they can more clearly formulate how to turn the product's potential into reality.

With contributions from professionals from Australia, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Russia, and the UK presenting real-world examples of persona method, this book will provide readers with valuable insights into this exciting research area. The inspiration to create user descriptions includes character-driven narratives, and the film Thelma & Louise is analyzed in order to understand how the development process can also be an engaging story in various professional contexts.

With a solid foundation in her own research at the IT University of Copenhagen and more than five years of experience in solving problems for businesses, Lene Nielsen is Denmark's leading expert in the persona method. She has a PhD in personas and scenarios, and through her research and practical experiences she has developed her own approach to the method 10 Steps to Personas. Personas User Focused Design presents a step-by-step methodology of personas which will be of interest to developers of IT, communications solutions and innovative products.

The first book on personas to be founded from research Provides guidelines and templates to write personas and scenarios Contains numerous cases and material from industrial projects

Inhalt

Stories About Users.- Step 1 - A Slice of the World.- Step 2 - The First Connections.- Step 3 - Food for Thought.- Step 4 - The Final Number.- Step 5 - Do You Know Karina?.- Step 6 - Exposition to Action.- Step 7 - The Reality of Everyone?.- Step 8 - Get the Message Across!.- Step 9 - Stories About the Future.- Step 10 - It Does Not End Here.- Personas in a More User Focused World.