It’s on again, OZ-IA, the Sydney based Information Architecture conference, now in its third year (Sept 20-21st). Yet again I’ll be lobbing into Sydney for this event, and looking forward to catching up with all my IA and UX colleagues. Over the last two years I have always met new people in the field or learn a fair few new things at this conference, from the formal sessions and corridor talk.
Now OZ-IA may seem like a lay back conference, I’ll tell you it isn’t, in some respects, some of the topics can be a little full on. But that said the social aspect in previous years has been spontaneous yet entertaining.
A while back Matthew Hodgson had a glance over the usefulness of personas, I have to agree with what he had to say, they tend to be under used.
I have encountered the odd projects where they has been a distinct undercurrent to just jettison personas altogether. After all what are they good for … absolutely nothing.
Okay before you all start jumping up and down. I’m going to add to Matthew’s persona usage list and hopefully dispel this myth. I’m not going to explain how to build a persona, there are plenty of books and articles on the web that have covered this.
From a user experience view we are always looking for the real world interaction that we can translate into the virtual world. The procedure that we can mirror with an element of user familiarity to leverage of a person’s previous experience.
However from time to time you run across something in the real world that just needs to be streamlined before it’s moved into the virtual.
I’ll give you an example.
The National Australia Bank (NAB) have an interesting method for quick cheque deposits, this is from the instructions on the deposit envelope.
Web Directions User Experience 2008 continues from the morning after a filling lunch in a packed Melbourne town hall.
Jackie Moyes - Converting Research Data into Business Speak
Use of Core personas, compare design ideas, and feature analysis against the personas requirements. Will they use it.
Use of core case studies, short one page, based on emtographic research
Design is about negotiation process.
Use of feature analysis via competitor analysis. Looking at what the audience want of the features the persona wants via
Design is innovation.
Innovation in the wrong area is a waste of time.
