Data

Jeg har i længere tid følt en usikkerhed når jeg så personas beskrivelserne til borger.dk. Det er ikke fordi der er noget i vejen med beskrivelserne og der er lavet en rigtig god side om brugercentrisk udvikling, der både forklarer baggrunden både for metoden og for selve beskrivelserne samt giver gode råd og links.
MEN der er et forhold som gør at jeg rynker brynene og føler mig lidt rystet mest som borger, men også som persona ekspert, nemlig – hvad er det for et datagrundlag som beskrivelserne er baserede på?

Når man ser efter, er grundlaget to rapporter fra Alsted kommunikation og fra Teknologisk Institut, hhv.: Digital kommunikation mellem det offentlige og borgerne (Alsted Research 2005) og Analyse af Danskernes IKT-Færdigheder (Teknologisk Institut 2005). Rapporterne er omfattende og der er et rigtigt godt datamateriale i rapporterne, men begge rapporter fokuserer på brug af IT – hhv. parathed i forhold til digital kommunikation og IKT færdigheder. Kigger man på personas beskrivelserne er der yderligere kilder til viden: Gallups Kompas segmenteringsmodel og Avislæsearketyper. I kompas er befolkningen delt op i 8 segmenter baseret på bla. alder og holdning til teknologi. Avislæsearketyperne er en segmenteringsmodel baseret på undersøgelser af avislæsere og har udgangspunkt i mediebrug.

Efter at de 12 personas er beskrevet har den Digitale Taskforce brugt en række andre kilder til at udbygge beskrivelserne.
Så grundlaget for at inddele hele Danmarks befolkning er altså deres holdninger til og færdigheder i brug af IT og to segmenteringsmodeller.
Segmenter er markedsføringsværktøjer, de har et præcist sigte, der tager udgangspunkt i forbrug og er målrettet mod kommunikation, modsat personas er de statiske og uden kontekst – de dur til alt.

Det betyder at en portal, der skal henvende sig til hele Danmarks befolkning og hvor alle skal kunne få informationer fra og kontakt til det offentlige ikke tager udgangspunkt i , at vi ikke allesammen har den samme forestilling om det offentlige. Og mit spørgsmål er, hvad er det egentlig der opdeler Danmarks befolkning når det drejer sig om borgerservice på nettet? er det at være på nettet? eller er det forståelsen af domænet – at være borger?
Man kan sagtens have høje IT kundskaber, men ikke fatte en dyt af den offentlige sektor, eller omvendt have meget lave IT kundskaber og føle sig som en fisk i vandet med fuld forståelse for, hvordan det offentlige er indrettet og hvad det er for en størrelse. Tænk bare på en ung person der har brugt en computer hele sit liv, men som først skal til at forstå sig selv i forhold til hele den offentlige sektor: hvad er skat? bor jeg i en kommune? er min læge en del af det offentlige? Eller den 75 årige seminarie lektor, der ikke har en pc, men som forstår det at være borger fuldt ud.

i modsætning til segmenter er Personas er afhængige af det designområde eller domæne de skal bruges i og området er med til at inddele dem. Derfor kan man ikke genbruge personas fra et projekt til et andet, for domænet er med til at afgøre, hvordan personas “snittet” skal lægges. Så er det at jeg spørger mig selv: Hvorfor er der ikke lavet undersøgelser af, hvordan brugerne forstår det offentlige? Eller hvad vil det sige at være borger for forskellige grupper?

Man kan sagtens lave pragmatiske personas , så længe at man ved, at det her er pragmatisk og data er måske ikke helt valide, men det er da bedre end intet. Det er imidlertid ikke mit indtryk, at det er det som borger.dk har tilstræbt.

One Response to “Data”

  1. Thomas Visby SnitkerFebruary 13, 2007Angående undersøgelser af hvordan borgerne/brugerne opfatter det offentlige; i KMD var jeg på et projekt om Netborger hvor Klaus Kaasgaard, Thomas Myhlendorff og jeg prøvede at afdække netop det – ved at besøge tre kommuner (Mørkov, Silkeborg og Kbh) og observere og interviewe på begge sider af diverse skranker, fx på bibliotektet, rådhuset, telefonomstillingen, kommuneinformation. Derefter lavede vi forskellige former for brugerinddragelse, bla workshops og brugervenlighedstest. Vi fandt ud af at både indefra-ud og udefra-ind perspektiverne på det offentlige var relevante – at fordi den offentlige sektor er så stor herhjemme er der mange der har en ret stor domæneviden om det offentlige som afsender (fx fordi de er eller har været ansatte, eller har forældre, børn eller ægtefæller der er eller har været det). (jeg tror ikke at man behøver ‘_six_ degrees of separation’ for at finde en link fra en given dansker til en ansat i det offentlige 
    Og vi fandt mange andre indgange/tilgange end det var muligt at afspejle i det færdige system (ikke at jeg har fulgt netborger særligt tæt siden) – men ‘folk’ ledte efter en indgang der hed ‘jeg vil klage’ eller ‘jeg vil søge tilskud’ på samme høje niveau som Kultur&Fritid og Teknik&Miljø.
    Måske der er andre der har undersøgt dette nærmere?

Personas – Communication or Process?

ABSTRACT

Personas is viewed as a method for communicating user data to all members of the design team and customers, but maybe it should rather be viewed as a process method that ensures a user centered design process.
1. INTRODUCTION
Personas are fictitious descriptions of users based on field data. Personas encourage a user-centered design process. When design solutions are discussed the persona is inserted into various scenarios that form the point of departure for design decisions. The design of the personas method varies. Cooper, with the introduction of the goal-directed method, emphasizes detailed user descriptions (precision), while Pruitt and Grudin[12] focus on accuracy through relations to field data. The precise persona approach sees the advantages of the method as its ability to focus design and its ability to end discussions in its capacity of being a communication tool, [1], [2], [3]. The accurate approach [4], [11], [10] focuses on a strict relationship between data and what is communicated in the personas description. Focus areas in the descriptions are: computer skills, market size and influence, activities a typical day or week in the user’s life, the persona’s fears and aspirations. Added are strategic and tactical reflections. Both view the method as a communication tool for data.

2. COMMUNICATION OR PROCESS

The question of seeing a method as a communication tool implies a communication model of sender, message, media, and receiver [6]. In the personas method this can be seen in the attitude towards how the personas are created and communicated; someone translates the data into personas descriptions that are communicated to the design team via campaigns, e.g. slideshows, posters, emails, mugs [12] or as [11] puts it: “information about your complete personas is sent off into your organization”. This sender receiver model obscures one of the biggest challenges in the personas methods: how to get buy-in for using the method from the whole organization. Rather than seeing the methods as a communication tool, it could be viewed as a process tool – a movement, or a designed sequence of changes, towards a user centered design involving all parties in the design process.

3. TEN STEPS – A PROCESS MODEL

From a practical and a research perspective I propose a model that views the personas method as a process. In the following I will go through the model from a process perspective.

3.1 Step 1: Finding the Users

The initial step is to get hold of as much knowledge of the users as possible. The data can originate from several sources: interviews, observations, second hand information, questionnaires, reports, cultural probes etc.

3.2 Step 2: Building a Hypothesis

Working with the personas method is focusing on users in a certain project context or domain and building a hypothesis of how the context might influence what constitutes a persona and the number of personas.

This is illustrated in the following example. A project for a national Danish authority concerning redesign of a web portal for business reports to different governmental authorities. The national authority had a tradition for dividing Danish businesses into categories of size and trades. When using the personas method this division of businesses did not make sense. The domain is not business size or trade, but reporting. What mattered is how big the company is – big companies have dedicated staff to do the reporting, small companies have staff where reporting is a minor part of their job. Another factor is whether the person who reports is employed within the company or is a consultant [9].

3.3 Step 3: Verification

In the step ‘Verification’ the focus is on finding data that supports the initial patterns and at the same time supports the personas descriptions and the scenario writing e.g. what are the users values? What are their attitudes towards the system/site? The personas method is fundamentally a qualitative method and as such it requires several phases of looking at the result from both a partial and total perspective. In ‘Verification’ the partial result is tested to see if it obtains meaning in comparison with the overall result [5]. From a process perspective this test can be facilitated by involved members of the design project.

3.4 Step 4: Finding Patterns

Finding patterns is a categorization of the data into meaningful patterns that can support the personas descriptions. From a process perspective it is of importance to show the categorization to other team members, project partners etc.

In the above mentioned case we conducted a workshop with project partners and report suppliers in order to get their approval of the findings and patterns. This gave them not only an understanding of the underlying data and their comments to the interpretations, but provided also their support of the method.

3.5 Step 5: Constructing Personas

This step is not only a description of users, but includes an awareness of the final goal of the method; to create design solutions that takes the needs of the persona as starting point [7]. The fifth step might enhance buy-in. Pruitt and Adlin [11] address a “you” – the author of personas descriptions – in their book, when writing about this step. The personas method should rather be perceived as a collective process where everybody should understand how the descriptions came about and what they can be used for. If different team members are allowed to be part of the writing process they feel ownership of the personas. Afterwards the descriptions can be rewritten by a single person to ensure homogeneity in writing and presentation.

3.6 Step 6: Defining Situations

This step is a preparation for the scenarios. Here the situations in which the persona will use the system/site are described. Again it is a step where inclusion of partners can prove valuable for the process of adapting the method.

3.7 Step 7: Validation and Buy-in

To ensure that all participants agree on the descriptions and the situations two strategies can be followed. 1: ask everybody their opinion. 2: let them participate in the process. Having a process view helps create sessions where as many stakeholders as possible can be involved in the developing the personas and in using them for design.

3.8 Step 8: Dissemination of Knowledge

If the personas are not disseminated to participants they are not worth anything. It is not only the personas that needs to be distributes to everybody, but also the data – the foundation document [11], [4].

3.9 Step 9: Creating Scenarios

The personas method proves valuable when a persona enters a scenario. Teaching designers to think in persona-focused scenarios is part of the process. If they are not taught, the method might not be used by the individuals during the design phase where personas advocates are long gone.

3.10 Step 10: Ongoing Development

Lastly information on the personas should be updated [8]. It is crucial that not everybody is able to change the information, but knows whom to contact. I recommend having a personas ambassador who looks into the descriptions and who project participants can contact if they find irregularities in the descriptions. It is also the ambassador’s duty to let the personas die when they have outlived their purpose [11].

4. CONCLUSION

This project model is a proposal. The insistence on a process view in the method seems to clear some of the problems reported in communicating the method to designers [8]. To refine the process and to test it further studies are needed.

5. REFERENCES

[1] Cooper, A. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. SAMS, Indianapolis, 1999.

[2] Goodwin, K. Perfecting your Personas. www.cooper.com, 2001.

[3] Goodwin, K., Getting from Research to Personas. www.cooper.com, 2002.

[4] Grudin, J. and J. Pruitt. Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development. In PDA 2002, Malmoe, 2002.

[5] Kvale, S. InterView. Hans Reitzel, København, 1997.

[6] McQuail, D. Audience Analysis. Sage, London, 1997.

[7] Nielsen, L. Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios, PhD Series. Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen, 2004.

[8] Nielsen, L. Then the picture comes in your mind of what you have seen on TV. In The 5th DHCIR Symposium, Copenhagen, 2005.

[9] Nielsen, L., E. Landbo, and A. Vorre Hansen. Personas for Virk.dk – beskrivelser af personas, orbitter og deres tilknyttede data. Snitker & Co, 2007.

[10] Olsen, G., Making Personas More Powerful. www.boxesandarrows.com, 2004.

[11] Pruitt, J. and T. Adlin. The Persona Lifecycle. The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies. San Francisco, 2006.

[12] Pruitt, J. and J. Grudin, Personas: Practice and Theory. www.research.microsoft.com, 2003.