Bringing web apps to life with application personas
A few posts ago I argued that users should not be the only ones profiled by persona archetypes.
Philip wrote an interesting comment. He has been designing telephone voice interfaces (“press the # sign..”) for more than ten years, and has in fact used personas for his applications. Look for his experience based advice in his comment.
Amazon: Voice user interface (look inside – Google Books)
Here it is!
Googling a bit further I found exactly what I was talking about. In a four years old discussion thread on IxDA, Ben Hunt describes his process, with the “conversation” between the user persona and the site persona.
I have a pet SP called Pierre, who’s a concierge in a high-class hotel. There are several aspects of Pierre’s style that I find really useful in designing web sites, including:
His brevity: he only communicates the minimum information required to communicate what needs to be communicated.
His low demand: he only asks for the minimum of input and information; he makes up the rest through intelligence, memory, note-taking and experience.
His modesty: he doesn’t draw glory to himself; his satisfaction comes solely from helping his clients achieve their goals.
His proactivity: he’s always anticipating what customers may want next even before they’ve thought of it themselves.
Good stuff. Another point coming across in both the voice and site parts mentioned here, is that the application (or site) persona would be able to act as a proxy for the sometimes abstract brand values.
