Amber DeRosa — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:13:04 GMT

Hello John,

I would like to hear more about how to improve search for internal corporate sites and content. People are accustomed to information at the tip of their fingers at home. However, within the firewalls of an internal company it has become difficult to find information. Most people ask “experts” to answer their questions. If the information was easily found via search, it would increase efficiency for both the requester of the information and the “expert” who provides information. The “expert” will be able to focus on their daily tasks and the requestor will receive information in a quick and automated fashion.

Amber DeRosa — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:50:09 GMT

Nice Article!

I concur with number 1 and 3 in relation to a project I have worked on where personas were utilized to convince management live collaboration tools can be useful to our company.
1. Cooper based his persona on a real person he’d actually met, talked with, and observed.
3. The persona wasn’t a document. Rather, it was the activity of empathetic role-play.

The personas on this project were based on real employees at my company. We were using them to create scenarios for how “real” employees would utilize live collaboration tools. Some managers believed live collaboration tools were flashy technologies used by teenagers and e-commerce companies. Personas were used to explain the usage within our departments. The document was not the focus, It was the ideas and scenarios for use that helped the team envision the solution. The personas helped management to visualize who would use things like “chat” for business related functions.

You said ” I’m not saying that a persona description can’t be a useful, even powerful, tool for explaining users to stakeholders. It can certainly be highly valuable in that role. I’m only saying that if you’re doing personas only for that benefit, you’re missing the point.”

Can’t we utilize personas to make decisions for the field of use of new technologies with in our companies? I hope that is not what you ment by missing the point.

Personas can be useful in various instances however we need to analyze when and where they will add value to the project and when they are just pretty pictures and stories.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Amber DeRosa