"Perfect Profiles"Information Highways (ACM Technews 12/04)

Kennedy, Mary Lee Companies are increasingly basing their interface design decisions on "personas," context-sensitive archetypes or profiles of natural groupings of real users that ensure that products will meet their requirements and goals. Personas are often assigned photos, names, and personalities to make them seem as real and credible as possible. Effective personas boost a company's opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty and make it more likely that every organizational member will do his or her utmost to fulfill user goals by determining what aspects should be considered as well as what aspects should be ignored; the overall result is shorter and less costly product development cycles, greater customer satisfaction and allegiance, and better understanding of user wants and needs. Project managers use personas to relate the project vision to senior executives and recognize the capabilities, features, and content that best suit the target audience. Expert usability reviews of existing products and usability testing scenarios can be influenced by personas, while marketing functions can employ personas to demonstrate their understanding of the target audience's goals via campaigns and materials; furthermore, personas' knowledge can be leveraged by support functions to organize effective knowledge bases and structure responses to assistance requests. Burgeoning Web and software use has certified the direct correlation between user satisfaction and user loyalty, and personas are playing an increasingly critical role in the development of software, Web applications, and other products. A 2001 Forrester Research study of Web redesign projects concluded that measurable user-experience goals are essential to successful Web sites, a notion that could be applied to any product development process. Using personas in conjunction with other user-oriented methods (task analysis, usability testing, etc.) increases the probability that a more usable design will emerge.Click Here to View Full Article