1. Christine Rosakranse: COMM:6750
(P.S. For my interface project, I am going to design a site that allows the user to enter a search term
and get the definition results from multiple online dictionaries. They can then save these results in a “personal
lexicon” that will be accessible to their account. I am also thinking about including a voting feature on the
site that enables a user to vote for the best returned definition, thereby increasing its “relevancy” rank,
which would place it higher on the return list.)
Personas
Eric Meyers - Software Developer
“I consider myself pretty smart, but I am not always able to make people understand me and I
don’t understand them. I guess you can say that I’ve focused so much on learning about computers
that I never bothered with learning much about how to talk to people.”
Demographics:
Gender Male
Age 32
Date of Birth June 23
Hometown Rochester, NY
Education Master’s Degree in CS
Background:
Personal characteristics:
He is highly analytical and technically-minded. This has led
him to complain that grammar rules are not “rational”. He
has given up on trying to explain technical concepts to other
people and finds problems when working with other
departments in his company.
Computer literacy:
Being a software developer, Eric is constantly on the web for personal and research purposes. He always
has his laptop with him and uses it whenever he has free time. He often reads about new and developing
technologies, coming across new terms daily. However, he does not engage in social activities on the web,
even with other programmers.
Vocabulary knowledge:
Eric knows all of the computer-related terminology that is relevant to his occupation. He is constantly
reading computer manuals in order to increase his knowledge in this arena. In general, he does not read
book for pleasure. He also did not get good grades in his college English courses. The professors would
often remark that his ideas were solid, but his presentation of them was rambling and ill-conceived.

2. End Goals:
Eric would like to learn the vocabulary that would let him relate to non-programmers. He would also like
to be able to remember those words that represent concepts that are cool and new in the computing world.
Sandra Cheung – English Teacher
“I absolutely adore words. I am always collecting new ones or ones with new uses and sharing
those with my students.”
Demographics:
Gender Female
Age 29
Date of Birth April 16
Hometown New Paltz, NY
Education Master’s Degree in Education
Background:
Personal characteristics:
Sandra enjoys being a teacher and most of her activities
revolve around the humanities. She writes in her spare time
and overviews the school’s newspaper production.
Computer literacy:
She goes online often to check her e-mail and to research
news about teaching and education. She would say that she is not really a computer person, but that she
“can manage” with most applications. If she has any real problems, she calls the school’s tech guy for
help.
Vocabulary knowledge:
Her literary vocabulary is quite large, but with new terms coming to the forefront every day she has room
to expand mentally. She also appreciates the different shadings of meaning and finds the etymology of
words to be fascinating.
End Goals:
Sandra would like a way to look up new words in multiple dictionaries to see if the definitions are
consistent. She would like to save them for future reference as well.