You will be doing the first four lifecycle stages of persona development, which means of course that this is in conjunction with some (ongoing) software project. I encourage you to pick a project of personal interest to at least 1 member of your team.
Project Installment 2: Conception & Gestation
Summary: Turn in the following:
- 1, 2: As a team, your hand-in needs to include all the elements of Figure 4.1. Use that as your checklist.
- 3. Individually, you also each have something to turn in (see below).
1. Conception stuff to turn in (as a team):
- a. “Affinity diagrams” of Fig 4.1: A (potentially unreadable) snapshot of the entire affinity diagram. eg, like Fig 4.7.
- b. sort of like “Assumptions” of Fig 4.1: (must be readable): All of your non-data stuff in there. (software team’s assumptions, vision, etc.)
- c. sort of like “Data sources” of Fig 4.1: (must be readable): A list (or mark-up of the list you turned in before) of all the data sources you actually drew from somehow in your affinity diagram, and what “label” each data source ended up under. (What are “labels”: the pink boxes in Fig 4.8.)
Example: If you drew 7 factoids from paper X, 3 ending up under “interests” and 4 under “motivations”, then
tell me you used paper X and that the labels its stuff ended up under were “interests & “motivations”.
- d. “Persona skeletons” of Fig. 4.1: (must be readable) All of your skeletons. eg, like Fig 4.10.
2. Gestation stuff to turn in (as a team):
- a. “Prioritized Persona skeletons” of Fig. 4.1: results of the software team’s prioritizing of the skeletons. (Just tell me the priorities that got assigned to the skeletons you turn in above.)
- b. “Persona Foundation documents” of Fig 4.1: 1-2 personas you developed from the skeletons.
Can be formatted any way you want to (eg, like Abby or like Appendix B). But every thing you assert about your persona(s) must be fully footnoted/commented to substantiate every aspect, to the same degree that the one in Appendix B is. (Fig 4.15 suggests using Word’s “comment” feature, but I prefer footnotes).
- what about Step 6 “validating”? I don’t think you have time, so you have my permission not to do this until the next assignment (“birth”).
3. Individual stuff to turn in:
- Who did what % of the work behind each of the above deliverables. So, each team member will tell me the %s all the team members did on what. e.g.:
If the team has Sally, Sue, and Joe, then
Sally will turn in her view of the %s like this: “Sally did 50% of item 1a, 50% of item 1c, and 50% of item 2a. Sue did 50% of item 1a, 100% of item 1b, and 50% of item 2a. Joe did everything else”
Sue will also turn in her view of the %s like this.
Joe will also turn in his view of the %s like this.
How to turn it in: Bring hardcopy of the team parts (ie, items 1-2 above) to class, so that we can discuss in class. Also email all parts to Dr. Burnett. Put "Project installment 2" in the subject.
When everything is due: See class schedule for the due dates.
Project Installment 3: Birth and Maturation
1. Turn in the following (as a team):
- a. Remember back in the lifecycle stage when you said what problem(s) the software team is having that you were creating a persona to solve? Put it/them here (you can change from what you originally said if you want to.)
Note: What problem(s) your persona is addressing affects the rest of this installment and the next one, so choose well.
Note: Look ahead at Chapter 6: In essence, you're targeting one or more of the Stages it talks about. This in term will affect your communication strategy, elevator pitch, etc.
- b. Your communication strategy (e.g., a fragment of one is shown in Fig C.8, p. 200)
Note: The book makes the point that education must be progressive. Make sure your communication strategy shows this progressive nature in its "When" column.
- c. Your elevator pitch (e.g., p. 200)
- d. Which parts of your persona are to be protected, vs. which are modifiable (e.g., Abby changeable-parts figure).
- e. Include all of your written "push" materials (e.g., posters? emails?).
Note: Your comunication strategy should also tell me where these are located/distributed (e.g., posted on Ron's door?)
- f. Include your written "pull" materials, i.e. your web site containing the persona
Note: Must include at least your persona, and also (on a separate page linked from the persona), your full foundation document. The book describes something much more elaborate than this, but you don't have to go to those lengths for this class.
- g. Your validation of your persona -- how you did it and what you changed as a result.
Note: At a minimum, must include you "auditing" each others' footnotes and so on to make sure everything is really solid. You can validate in additional ways too if you want.
- h. When was your "give birth" meeting? What went well, what went wrong, any surprises? (Just bullet lists are fine here -- no need to get too elaborate with this one.
- i. What exactly you told the software team about the processes you will change and how the persona is going to be integrated into those processes. (A sentence to a paragraph in length is fine; no need to get more elaborate at this time.)
- j. Any changes you made as a result of requests from the software team when you had the "gave birth" meeting.
2. Turn in the following individually:
- Who did what % of the work behind each of the above deliverables. So, each team member will tell me the %s all the team members did on what. e.g.:
If the team has Sally, Sue, and Joe, then
Sally will turn in her view of the %s like this: “Sally did 50% of item 1a, 50% of item 1c, and 50% of item 2a. Sue did 50% of item 1a, 100% of item 1b, and 50% of item 2a. Joe did everything else”
Sue will also turn in her view of the %s like this.
Joe will also turn in his view of the %s like this.
How to turn it in: Bring hardcopy of the team part (ie, item 1 above) to class, so that we can discuss in class. Also email all parts to Dr. Burnett. Put "Project installment 3" in the subject.
When everything is due: See class schedule for the due dates.
Project Installment 4: Project Installment 4: Adulthood
Overview: from your "birth meeting" onward, keep records of what the development team did with your persona. Your mission is ultimately to figure out what went right and what went wrong during adulthood.
1. Turn in the following (as a team):
- The product's Stage(s) you're trying to support.
- How you hoped the development team would incorporate the persona into their processes (just a bullet list is fine. Be clear about which items for which Stage if there is more than 1 Stage involved).
- An event log of everything that happened, starting at the birth meeting. Each event looks like this:
- Date/time (eg, "2/16/15, 1:00 pm")
- Setting (eg, "Birth meeting").
- Event name (eg, "The boss questioned whether it really makes sense to use personas on this project". eg "The team started asking the persona questions right away. Here are the questions they asked...")
- Outcomes, and also what if anything you did in response (eg, "Took the boss out for drinks. After 4 drinks, boss decided persona does make sense". eg: "Mostly this went great and the developers immediately decided to change the features as the persona recommended, but the persona wasn't able to answer Q3.")
- Any materials involved (eg, if an email, include the email. Etc.)
- The bottom line: summary of what the good outcomes were, what the challenges were that you overcame, and what the bad outcomes were (say, 1 paragraph each and/or 1 bullet list each).
2. Turn in the following individually:
- Who did what % of the work behind each of the above deliverables. So, each team member will tell me the %s all the team members did on what. e.g.:
If the team has Sally, Sue, and Joe, then
Sally will turn in her view of the %s like this: Sally did 50% of work in this installment, Sue did 33% of the work in this installment, and Joe did the rest.
Sue will also turn in her view of the %s like this.
Joe will also turn in his view of the %s like this.
How to turn it in: Bring hardcopy of the team part (ie, item 1 above) to class, so that we can discuss in class. Also email all parts to Dr. Burnett. Put "Project installment 4" in the subject.
When everything is due: See class schedule for the due dates.
Date of last update: Feb. 16, 2015.