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There’s more discussion of potential benefits of personas to Fedora [https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-November/msg00046.html in an old ‘User Profiles’ thread on fedora-advisory-board list], so please check it out for more info.
There’s more discussion of potential benefits of personas to Fedora [https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-November/msg00046.html in an old ‘User Profiles’ thread on fedora-advisory-board list], so please check it out for more info.
= Coffee Shop Personas =
If you walk into a local coffee shop today and see computer users, what operating system are they running on their laptops? Most likely not Fedora. What if we wanted to change that?
[[Image:personas-coffee-shop.png]]
Let's think about the types of people who frequent a coffee shop with a computer:
== General User Characteristics ==
=== Motivation ===
Why do people compute at coffee shops?
* fewer distractions at the coffee shop than at home - focus - work or study
* meet friends there - social setting - feel connected to community
* coffee and light snacks are cheap admission
* coffee is enjoyable
* wifi access while out & about
* get out of the house / don't have an office (telecommuter, consultant, unemployed)
* comfortable surroundings / creative atmosphere / nice decor / amenities (fireplace, artwork, music, good smells, stylish, comfortable chairs)
* employees know you, friendly service
* traveller (at airport, inbetween hotels, at a conference, etc.- less lonely than hotel, a place to go, place to charge your stuff)
* service - don't have to clean up after yourself
=== User Classification ===
Who uses a computer at a coffee shop?
* consultants / telecommuters
* students
* travellers
* the unemployed
=== References ===
These are some references online used to gather the information above:
* http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070711085221AALUvcl
* http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AlM_biMTW6KHQgzJCfgMcf8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070525061801AAt9QvR
* http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950421033208823.html
* http://technologizer.com/2009/08/06/coffee-shops-laptops/
* http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3720
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/11/coffee-shops-laptops-free-wi-fi
== Personas ==
Let's build two personas to represent typical coffee shop users and review them in detail. Should we want Fedora to be the choice of coffee shop goers, these personas will provide us some hints on what types of features and functionality are important to those users.

Latest revision as of 14:57, 12 May 2010

Personas

These are a work-in-progress.

About Personas

What is a persona?

From Wikipedia:

Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of the users in order to help to guide decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design. Personas are most often used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software and are also considered a part of interaction design (IxD), have been used in industrial design and more recently for online marketing purposes.

A lot of discussion about personas is available on Cooper’s blog and is a good read for getting up to speed on what they are and how they work.

How are personas going to help us make Fedora policy and design decisions?

Well, for example, you may recall the great panda panda-monium from early www.fedoraproject.org redesign mockups, in which about half of folks giving feedback loved the panda (“Please kill to keep that damn Panda, mairin. The thing is too cute and seems to look like a great little mascot.”), and the other half felt the panda was an insult to Fedora users (“In general i like the layouts…. for 6 year old kids. If this is the best you can come up with you might as well base it on this: http://ostiaunlobby.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/teletubbies-group2.jpg”)

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion of the pandas. Those opinions may or may not have any bearing on how our target users might receive them, though. If we have a set of Fedora personas defined, we can talk about how each of the personas, designed to be representative of our target audience would feel about pandas. Discussing whether or not the Fedora panda is a good choice for our *target audience* or not will help us make decisions based on the target audience we’ve agreed upon for Fedora rather than base it on knee-jerk / personal / anecdotal reactions that merely represent the personal opinons of the folks who happened to be around at the time to give their feedback.

There’s more discussion of potential benefits of personas to Fedora in an old ‘User Profiles’ thread on fedora-advisory-board list, so please check it out for more info.