[Sigia-l] comparing personas, scenarios, uses cases, task analysis

[Karl Fast]

What are people's opinions about personas, scenarios, use cases, and
hierarchical task analysis during the early stages of design? When
you're figuring out the requirements and doing early prototyping?

Which ones do you prefer? Why? What do and don't you like about
them? Are there other techniques you prefer?

I ask because I am teaching a class in interaction design to
computer science students this term. Last week we covered the
chapter on identifying needs and establishing requirements. The
textbook talks mainly about scenarios, use cases, and task analysis
(I added personas cause I think they're darn useful).

We got into a discussion about the merits of each. As CS students
they've learned use cases and task analysis when they studied OOP
design and UML modelling. Personas and scenarios were new to them.


So I'm wondering how people here would compare them?

--karl