[Sigia-l] software for persona design

[Eric Scheid]

On 29/8/05 8:07 PM, "Andrew Boyd" <andrew at friendlymanual.com> wrote:

> I am ashamed to say that I have always written free-text personas using
> a text editor. If it has been necessary to plug them into a design tool
> (Visio or one of IBM/Rational's) then this has usually happened after
> the initial analysis rather than as part of an assisted process.

Hmmm, lets not confuse the deliverable product from the definition of that
persona. I write up my personas in a filemaker database, but there is almost
no structure to the data. The crucial definition data is compiled into one
field as free-text prose, and since I don't see any easy way to convert dry
statistics into elegant prose my workflow will inevitably include that last
manual step of writing the persona description.

> If there was such a tool, and I was to use it, it would:
> - supply a template that helped populate a job-specific database with
> useful (in context) information - this might be one or more of (name of
> analyst, date/time written, date/time modified, amendments, source of
> information, title of persona, relative position of persona target in
> the system, current tasks associated, projected tasks associated)

nice.

> - fit into a workflow system (1. gather 2. verify 3. associate 4. plug
> into wider design)

what sort of research do you do, and what sort of analysis processes do you
use?

> - offer retrieval by any combination of information type or workflow stage

really -- how many personas do you have per project?

> - have full-ish version control.

> I'm sure that there are a hundred things I have missed here that I will
> forehead-slap tomorrow about :)

I forgive you -- so long as you post them here tomorrow too :-)

e.