This document discusses personas and how they can be used to guide the design of social software and citizen media applications. It defines personas as fictional representations of target users that help focus the design process. It also discusses communicating personas to stakeholders and using scenarios, like Bridget Jones' experience on a train listening to her iPod, to bring personas to life. The document is from a presentation on personas and citizen media at the World Usability Day conference.

1. Personas 2.0 - Making user research
usable for designing social software
David Geerts
Jeroen Vanattenhoven
World Usability Day
8/11/2007

2. The Citizen Media Project
CITIZEN MEDIA is a
collaborative FP6 research
project which unites leading
creative and technology User-generated media
experts from across Europe on
research, development and Network
Co-created networke
validation of A/V systems to
media experience
enable multiple non-
professional users to co-create
networked applications and
experiences based on their
own user-generated content

3. CITIZEN MEDIA Consortium

4. Our work in Citizen Media
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USER IN VOLVEMEN T
Citizen-Media Applications
Citizen-Media Reference Architecture
Community Hosting on different testbeds

5. Personas
Personas are fictitious, specific, concrete
representations of target users that guide the
design process (Cooper)

7. Communicating Personas

12. Bridget Jones’ iPod
Gah! Almost missed train. Got on in nick of time but had
no choice of seat. Just one left next to quite nice looking
bloke but opposite nasty looking youth in baseball cap.
Said youth plugged in v. loud headphones almost
immediately so had no choice but to play nice new iPod.
Took this out below table with some care. Wanted nice
chap to see it (advertise self as successful young
professional) but not youth in cap (must not see self as
very much worth mugging).

15. http://karlziegler.blogspot.com

18. Sources
John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin (2007) The Persona Lifecycle.
Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design. Morgan
Kaufmann.
Djajadiningrat, J. P., Gaver, W. W., and Fres, J. W. 2000.
Interaction relabelling and extreme characters: methods for
exploring aesthetic interactions. In Proceedings of the 3rd
Conference on Designing interactive Systems: Processes,
Practices, Methods, and Techniques
Mike Kunivasky (2004) Extending a Technique: Group Personas.
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/extending_a_technique_
group_personas
Blythe M and Wright P. (2005) Bridget Jones’ iPod: Relating
Macro and Micro Theories of User Experience Through Pastiche
Scenarios. HOIT 2005
Mary Beth Rosson , John M. Carroll (2001) Usability
engineering: scenario-based development of human-computer
interaction, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco,
CA

19. Thank You!
Questions?