[Sigia-l] Re: Personas vs Business Needs? (Todd Warfel)
Theresa Putkey
tputkey at keypointe.ca
Wed Jul 19 12:32:50 EDT 2006
I'd like to see an example of the task analysis grid that you use, Todd.
Theresa Putkey
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Today's Topics:
1. SharePoint customization (Sean Lawrence)
2. RE: SharePoint customization (Mark Bardsley)
3. Personas vs Business Needs? (Jonathan Baker-Bates)
4. Re: Personas vs Business Needs? (Todd Warfel)
5. NYC IA Meetup *Tonight* (Anders Ramsay)
6. RE: Personas vs Business Needs? (Switzky, Andrew)
7. RE: Personas vs Business Needs? (Jonathan Baker-Bates)
8. Morville on Washingtonpost.com (Richard Hill)
9. RE: Personas vs Business Needs? (Jonathan Baker-Bates)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:47:37 -0500
From: Sean Lawrence <slawrence at lucidvagary.com>
Subject: [Sigia-l] SharePoint customization
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <44BD2CC9.3060305 at lucidvagary.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
I was wondering if anyone on list has any experience customizing SPS to
build out project request forms specifically or project management forms
in general. How flexible did you find it? How much, if any, custom
coding had to occur?
Thanks,
Sean
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:23:55 -0700
From: "Mark Bardsley" <markb at luxworldwide.com>
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] SharePoint customization
To: "'Sean Lawrence'" <slawrence at lucidvagary.com>, "'SIGIA-L'"
<sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <007b01c6aa9f$bdb2ee20$1901a8c0 at luxinternal.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sean,
I have a little experience working with SPS and forms. The out-of-the box
functionality is pretty good and allows you to do most things you would ever
want to do with a form. I assume that answers your flexibility question. If
you want to do something that it was not designed to do you can quickly run
into problems. Minimal customization is possible but you run a major risk of
the solution breaking with even minimal upgrades or changes in server
configuration. I hope that's not too vague...
In summary, if your form needs are basic, SharePoint probably has you
covered. If need to make customizations there are a few you can do but the
warranty is void.
- Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Sean Lawrence
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 11:48 AM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: [Sigia-l] SharePoint customization
I was wondering if anyone on list has any experience customizing SPS to
build out project request forms specifically or project management forms
in general. How flexible did you find it? How much, if any, custom
coding had to occur?
Thanks,
Sean
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 12:57:46 +0100
From: "Jonathan Baker-Bates" <Jonathan.Baker-Bates at Wheel.co.uk>
Subject: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
To: "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
<EA6F9EFA97D00C4CA7DAFEAF26CE4DEA71E8F1 at aristotle.wheel.net>
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How do you use personas? I don't mean how are you supposed to use them
(Cooper-style or whatever), but how do you *actually* use them in your
work, if at all?
The reason I ask is that I'm having an interesting time making sure that
the personas I'm constructing as part of a large discovery phase
correspond to the client's business needs. This process is taking me
further than I'd like to from what my user research is telling me, and
I'm worried that the value of the whole exercise will degenerate into
selectively justifying foregone conclusions.
Personally, I use personas as a means of arriving at design directions.
They are necessarily vague, and journeys constructed using them are not
supposed to document the system's features. Usually, a brief explanation
of this is enough to keep a client from wanting the personas to answer
all the design questions, but sometimes it's not.
I'd be interested to hear whether others have hit real-world problems
around the use of personas on projects.
Jonathan
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:53:51 -0400
From: Todd Warfel <lists at toddwarfel.com>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
To: Jonathan Baker-Bates <Jonathan.Baker-Bates at Wheel.co.uk>
Cc: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <9DD61E7F-745D-429E-ACAF-7BEC5103116F at toddwarfel.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
Jonathan,
Personas aren't about business needs, they're about the customer's
behaviors, goals, wants, and needs (at least that's how we use them).
I think what you're asking, or should be asking is how do you match
up Business goals with Customer behaviors, goals, wants, and needs.
We use something called a task analysis grid. It's a large matrix,
based on data from our initial research and personas, that outlines
all the tasks and steps involved in completing a task that a customer
would go through in using a product. For instance, if you're going to
sign up for web hosting service, it outlines your initial comparison
shopping, how you make your decision, how you sign up and how you
would setup your hosting service (including confirmation and welcome
emails sent by the service provider).
To us, it's a pretty simple artifact, but to our clients, it's often
been the silver bullet. Each item is color-coded and prioritized from
1 (must haves) to 4 (sometime in the future). Those prioritizations
come from discussions with the business unit and are framed around
the Customer and Business needs. So, if it's a 1, it's because both
the customer and business unit think we have to have it. If it's a 2
(We really want it, but if something has to slip before launch,
that's one that gets cut) then the Business has decided that we can
live w/o it (either it wasn't critical to the business or the
customer, or possibly either/both).
The nice thing is that this shows the big picture for a project (what
is involved if we build the entire thing) as well as what's in for
right now (the no. 1s). One of our clients described it as "You've
just distilled our 60 page requirements document into one page."
I can send you an example if you'd like, just let me know.
On Jul 19, 2006, at 7:57 AM, Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
> How do you use personas? I don't mean how are you supposed to use
> them (Cooper-style or whatever), but how do you *actually* use them
> in your work, if at all?
> [...]
>
> Personally, I use personas as a means of arriving at design
> directions. They are necessarily vague, and journeys constructed
> using them are not supposed to document the system's features.
> Usually, a brief explanation of this is enough to keep a client
> from wanting the personas to answer all the design questions, but
> sometimes it's not.
>
> I'd be interested to hear whether others have hit real-world
> problems around the use of personas on projects.
>
> Jonathan
Cheers!
Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
--------------------------------------
Contact Info
Voice: (607) 339-9640
Email: todd at messagefirst.com
AIM: twarfel at mac.com
Blog: http://toddwarfel.com
--------------------------------------
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:29:59 -0400
From: "Anders Ramsay" <andersr at gmail.com>
Subject: [Sigia-l] NYC IA Meetup *Tonight*
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>, discuss at ixda.org,
iai-members at lists.iainstitute.org
Message-ID:
<6574f8540607190629h67fc44a8j2219875015c433df at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hi everyone -for those who are in the NYC area, we are having our
monthly NYC IA Meetup *tonight* (Wed.7/19) in Bryant Park (6th
Av./42nd St.). Whether you've been doing information architecture for
a while or you're new to the field, stop by for informal discussion
and to make new contacts.
More info at http://ia.meetup.com/14/events/4940656/
Hope to see you there!
- Anders
NYC IA Meetup Organizer
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:34:06 -0500
From: "Switzky, Andrew" <Andrew.Switzky at austinenergy.com>
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
To: "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
<C2A0748B0BBEDF45A33FDA55BF64A97CF00F7B at AE-MAIL.aenetad.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
"The reason I ask is that I'm having an interesting time making sure
that
the personas I'm constructing as part of a large discovery phase
correspond to the client's business needs. This process is taking me
further than I'd like to from what my user research is telling me, and
I'm worried that the value of the whole exercise will degenerate into
selectively justifying foregone conclusions."
Hi Jonathon,
Is it that you are finding that the personas contradict the client's
business needs? Is your user research suggesting that customer's will
not behave as the business believes that they will?
Andy
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:48:48 +0100
From: "Jonathan Baker-Bates" <Jonathan.Baker-Bates at Wheel.co.uk>
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
To: "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
<EA6F9EFA97D00C4CA7DAFEAF26CE4DEA71E8F4 at aristotle.wheel.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> To us, it's a pretty simple artifact, but to our clients,
> it's often been the silver bullet. Each item is color-coded
> and prioritized from
> 1 (must haves) to 4 (sometime in the future). Those
> prioritizations come from discussions with the business unit
> and are framed around the Customer and Business needs. So, if
> it's a 1, it's because both the customer and business unit
> think we have to have it. If it's a 2 (We really want it, but
> if something has to slip before launch, that's one that gets
> cut) then the Business has decided that we can live w/o it
> (either it wasn't critical to the business or the customer,
> or possibly either/both).
Interesting. I've used this approach in the past for requirements
gathering and prioritisation, where I've given each requirement (usually
things like "Allow single sign-on" or "Enable users to subscribe to news
via RSS") three scores: a commercial priority, a user priority and
usually some other dimension like brand. The total of these scores then
determines their overall priority for the project.
I like your idea of making this a more persona focussed analysis though
and would be very interested to see an example.
Jonathan
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------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:28:29 -0400
From: "Richard Hill" <rhill at asis.org>
Subject: [Sigia-l] Morville on Washingtonpost.com
To: <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <200607191432.k6JEWYvV026587 at mail.asis.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Apologies if this has already been posted.
At
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/07/14/DI2006071
400418.html
Peter Morville, author of "Ambient Findability," will be online Wednesday at
11 a.m. ET to discuss his book about the future of information and
connectivity.
Dick
_____
Richard B. Hill
Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Fax: (301) 495-0810
Voice: (301) 495-0900
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:34:03 +0100
From: "Jonathan Baker-Bates" <Jonathan.Baker-Bates at Wheel.co.uk>
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
To: "SIGIA-L" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
<EA6F9EFA97D00C4CA7DAFEAF26CE4DEA71E8F8 at aristotle.wheel.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Switzky, Andrew
> Sent: 19 July 2006 14:34
> To: SIGIA-L
> Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Personas vs Business Needs?
>
> Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:
>
> "The reason I ask is that I'm having an interesting time
> making sure that the personas I'm constructing as part of a
> large discovery phase correspond to the client's business
> needs. This process is taking me further than I'd like to
> from what my user research is telling me, and I'm worried
> that the value of the whole exercise will degenerate into
> selectively justifying foregone conclusions."
>
> Hi Jonathon,
>
> Is it that you are finding that the personas contradict the
> client's business needs? Is your user research suggesting
> that customer's will not behave as the business believes that
> they will?
Essentially, yes. For example, while the user testing revealed a clear
persona that's also very common from a usage point of view, it's hard to
give this persona a business justification because they are not seen as
having high enough (monetary) value.
Logically, I suppose I should therefore discount that persona from the
model, and design instead for the one that aligns better to the needs of
the business. But I naturally feel uncomfortable with that. I also feel
that my theoretical understanding of persona usage is lacking - so feel
free to tell me to go away and just study that for the answer!
Jonathan
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