Calligra/Usability and UX/Words/Personas: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:38, 11 December 2010

While using personas is an established usability practice, it's also not really applicable to a word processor. Most people expect to be able to do a lot of things, or at least be able to load documents the get from someone else.

So it doesn't make sense to define specific tasks for each persona. All want to use all the various features from time to time (if only to view them). If Words doesn't support all of them then people will not find it attractive and will not use Words as their day to day word processor either, even if their normal use may be very simple.

That said there are also features that are only useful for very select personas. But Susan the recreational user is not so simple as she might seem at first sight.

So using Personas is a rather poor design tool for a word processor. It's much more interesting to think of use cases. 50% of all usecases would belong to Susan anyway. Now for the remaining 50% we may want to invent many personas, but I think we are just going to have two personas Susan and A.D.Vance, with the latter collecting the advanced cases, for now.

End user read would then be when it's ready for Susan.

Susan

Is a recreational user with a sharp focus on web and social media Susan would use Words to write an fancy invitation for a party, and send that around as PDF or ODT or just print it. Susan would also use Words for the occasional letter, writing her resume, contribute to a document she recieved from an interest group she has joined (maybe online, maybe the local sports club).

Find the open tasks for supporting Susan on bugzilla

Viewing

A. D. Vance

is a fictitional user where we for now collect use cases to advanced for Susan. In the future we might create personas for specific (set of) use cases.

Find the open tasks for supporting Matt on bugzilla note that all the tasks for the above personas should also be closed.

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-In order to make KWord end user ready we have to know who the end user is, defining an end user is best done using a well established usability practice called "personas". We can depend on work already done for KDE as a whole and build on that. The personas can be found on [http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/Principles/KDE4_Personas KDE4 Personas].
+While using personas is an established usability practice, it's also not really applicable to a word processor. Most people expect to be able to do a lot of things, or at least be able to load documents the get from someone else.
-Applying the personas to KWord gives these background stories.  The personas are listed in order of how hard it is to support them (how much work needs to go into KWord to satisfy the user)
+So it doesn't make sense to define specific tasks for each persona. All want to use all the various features from time to time (if only to view them). If Words doesn't support all of them then people will not find it attractive and will not use Words as their day to day word processor either, even if their normal use may be very simple.
-==Susan==
+That said there are also features that are only useful for very select personas. But Susan the recreational user is not so simple as she might seem at first sight.
-as she is a recreational user with a sharp focus on web and social media, there are only a couple of usecases where she would use KWord as a word processor.  In future we can extend her usage by reusing koffice technology in social media usecases.
-Susan would use KWord to make flyers to advertise her upcoming party and send that around as PDF or ODT or just print it.
-Susan would also use KWord for the occasional letter or for writing her resume.  Having a pagespread concept would certainly be used by her.
-Find the open tasks for supporting Susan on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Susan&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla]
+So using Personas is a rather poor design tool for a word processor. It's much more interesting to think of use cases. 50% of all usecases would belong to Susan anyway. Now for the remaining 50% we may want to invent many personas, but I think we are just going to have two personas Susan and A.D.Vance, with the latter collecting the advanced cases, for now.
-==Matt==
+End user read would then be when it's ready for Susan.
-as he is a student geology he will be managing a lot of images and place them into documents that can easilly span 100 pages.  He uses anchored images to make sure a little change on page one doesn't require changing the text on all pages manually.
-Matt knows how to use paragraph and character styles and even managed to make one or two, but is much more comfortable using existing styles.
-Matt would be using features like a list of images at the end of his document as well as a table of content (at the start).
-Find the open tasks for supporting Matt on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Matt&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla] note that all the tasks for the above personas should also be closed.
+==Susan==
+Is a recreational user with a sharp focus on web and social media
+Susan would use Words to write an fancy invitation for a party, and send that around as PDF or ODT or just print it. Susan would also use Words for the occasional letter, writing her resume, contribute to a document she recieved from an interest group she has joined (maybe online, maybe the local sports club).
-==Santiago==
+Find the open tasks for supporting Susan on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Susan&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla]
-as he has managed his own networkwork he is someone that is happy with hidden features and smart solutions. He would be the kind of person to turn off auto-correct.  But he would also be the first to put a question in a forum asking why he can't type more than one space in a row in KWord.
-Santiago would use a self made template to write his documents and he'd use multiple columns plus floating frames much like the 'Colorful' template to make his documents.
-Santiago would use various variables like 'last printed date' since being able to get that info out of the doc makes him feel smart. He would be upset if his cursor position is not preserved between quit/open.
-Santiago would use tables for his documents and templates.
-Find the open tasks for supporting Santiago on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Santiago&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla] note that all the tasks for the above personas should also be closed.
+===Viewing===
-==Berna==
+==A. D. Vance==
-as she is an office worker she would have the highest demands for KWord of all.
+is a fictitional user where we for now collect use cases to advanced for Susan. In the future we might create personas for specific (set of) use cases.
-Find the open tasks for supporting Berna on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Berna&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla] note that all the tasks for the above personas should also be closed.
+Find the open tasks for supporting Matt on [https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&product=kword&target_milestone=Persona%3A+Matt&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED bugzilla] note that all the tasks for the above personas should also be closed.