Mark Avnet © 2008 all rights reserved [email protected] MASC 609 – Information Architecture Module...

Mark Avnet

© 2008 all rights [email protected]

MASC 609 – Information ArchitectureModule 2 – Personas

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email: [email protected]: 804-827-8879

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Agenda

• Homework review and presentation

• More theory

• Personas

• Persona project and in-class work

• Additional assignments

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For Today

Stop signs

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FOR TODAY:

1,2 read a bunch of stuff

3. Find and be prepared to present your weekly “coolest thing.”

class - Is it cool? What’s the insight?

4. Identify and be prepared to discuss a few examples of

information architecture at work in the physical world. See if you

can differentiate between interface (surface) and strategy.

REMEMBER CT track assignment - due Sept 4th: each

student find and capture five (5) examples of your local

environment that say “culture” or “giving” for the Brandcenter web

site. Images, short video, graffiti, quotes, found objects, etc…

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Today

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Always Keep These in Mind

• Users

• Content

• ContextContext

Content UsersDocument/data types, content objects, volume, metadata, structure… information ecology

Business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, resources, constraints

Audience, tasks, needs, information seeking behavior, experience

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Let’s start with users

Users

Audience, tasks, needs, information seeking behavior, experience

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The way we’d like it to be

1. User Asks Question

2. Something Happens

3. User Receives Answer

Reminded me of…

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But what’s wrong with this model?

1. User Asks Question

2. Computer does something

3. User Receives Answer

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Common Information Needs

The right thing

A few good things

Need it again“refinding”

Everything - exhaustive research

from M&R, p. 35

exploratory seeking

known-item seeking

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Additional Dimensions

• Not necessarily involving computers!

• Retrospective vs. prospective

• Focused vs. unfocused vs. serendipitous

• Finding information vs. finding people

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Basic Building Blocks of Information Seeking Behavior

1. Searching

2. Browsing

3. Asking

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User, Task, Context

• Characteristics of the User– Expert vs. layman– Current state of knowledge– …

• Characteristics of the Task– Duration and scope of need– Complexity of the task– …

• Additional context– Requirement for specific sources– Reference to external events– …

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Relevance

• The property of how “good” the information is– Harder to pin down than you think!– Complex function of user, task, and context

• Types of relevance:– Topical relevance: is it about the right thing?– Task-based relevance: does it help in what I’m

doing?– Utility: is it actually useful?

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Q0

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

A sketch of a searcher… “moving through many actions towards a general goal of satisfactory completion of research related to an information need.”

Picking Berries

Marcia J. Bates. (1991) The Berry-Picking Search: User Interface Design. In M. Dillon, editor, Interfaces for Information Retrieval and Online Systems: The State of the Art. New Jersey: Greenwood Press.

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Information Foraging Theory

• Analogy: human information seekers behave like foragers in hunter-gatherer society

• Wikipedia: “informavores” constantly make decisions on what kind of information to look for, whether to stay at the current site to try to find additional information or whether they should move on to another site, which path or link to follow to the next information site, and when to finally stop the search

• Information scent, information snacking• Implications for system design?

Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card. (1999) Information Foraging. Psychology Review, 106(4):643-675.

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Robert S. Taylor. (1962) The Process of Asking Questions. American Documentation, 13(4), 391--396.

Taylor’s Model

• The visceral need (Q1) the actual, but unexpressed, need for information

• The conscious need (Q2) the conscious within-brain description of the need

• The formalized need (Q3) the formal statement of the question

• The compromised need (Q4) the question as presented to the information system

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Taylor’s Model and IR Systems

Visceral need (Q1)

Conscious need (Q2)

Formalized need (Q3)

Compromised need (Q4)

IR System

Results

naïve users

QuestionNegotiation

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Mizzaro’s Model

RIN0

PIN0 PINm

r0 r1

q0

…

q1 q2 q3

rn

qr

Real information needs (RIN) = visceral need

Perceived information needs (PIN) = conscious need

Request = formalized need

Query = compromised need

Stefano Mizzaro. (1999) How Many Relevances in Information Retrieval? Interacting With Computers, 10(3), 305-322.

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Observations about Users

• Users don’t read

• Users don’t scroll

• Users are easily lost

• Users are easily frustrated

• Users are strangely persistent• Users are different! - so we have different

ways of organizing things.

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Organization of Information

• Probably as old as writing itself• Many different approaches:

– Library and Information Science: thesauri, indexing, etc.

– Computer Science: knowledge representations– Cognitive Science: how do humans grasp

concepts?– Philosophy: epistemology (“the nature of

knowledge”)– …

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“Exact” Systems

• Alphabetical

• Chronological

• Geographical

• Organizational (for Intranets)

• Based on any inherent attribute of entities

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“Inexact” (ambiguous) Systems

• Topic• Task• User• Metaphors• Hybrid• Organizational (in general)• Process

• Based on any inherent attribute of entities, interpreted

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Hierarchical Organization

• Systems of organization are mostly hierarchical– Represents a specific mode of thinking: reductionistic,

decompositional, general-to-specific

• Why?– “Natural order”– Convention and familiarity– Physical limitations– Cognitive limitations

• Hierarchies are everywhere:– Human organizations– Computer file systems– Physical file systems– Biological organisms

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Depth vs. Breadth

“shallow but wide”

“narrow but deep”

What are the tradeoffs?

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Non-Hierarchical Systems

• Hypertext

• Social tagging

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Hypertext

Direct links between different information segments

–Pre-dates the Web–Borges, The Aleph

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Social Tagging

del.icio.us

flickr

YouTube Brandtags.net

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Ideas in Tension

• Does a hierarchical organization system defeat the entire point of hypertext?

• Does social tagging eliminate the need for organization systems?

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Personas

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What are Personas?

“A summary representation of the system’s intended users, often described as real people. Any project can have one or more personas, each representing a different kind of audience of the system. Also known as user profiles, user roles, audience profiles.”

• They describe a site’s target users.

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Why bother?

• They help us remember that actual people will be using the site.

• They help focus the design to support the kinds of things that people will be doing on the site.

• The process of creating them may reveal things we wouldn’t have though of otherwise.

They help capture user needs and create a framework for making decisions about the architecture and design.

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And now Mark reads…

What the bleep is a buyer persona

Create and satisfy demand: two tools to complete the marketing loop

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People

• Have names• Have motivations and needs• Don’t exist in a vacuum when they’re not on

the site• Use the site within a context of expectation.

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Descriptions

“Emma is a graduate student looking for a credit card.”

Useful to an bank with an online presence?

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Descriptions

“Emma is a new graduate student who enjoys traveling. She’s looking for a bank that can provide personal checking as well as alternatives that will work anywhere around the world. She’s had a checking account before, but isn’t very experienced financially. She’s going to the bank tomorrow to open an appropriate account.”

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Descriptions

“Emma is 25 years old, a new graduate student who enjoys traveling nationally and internationally, and who is very comfortable with technology.

She’s looking for a bank that can provide personal checking as well as alternatives that will work anywhere around the world. She’s had a checking account before, but isn’t very experienced financially. She’s going to the bank tomorrow to open an appropriate account.”

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Project

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Personas Project - due next weekThree teams - each will:1. develop a web or interactive concept that targets you

and your peers - describe the function/purpose/features of the site - from the point of view of the site owner (ie: a bank trying to encourage graduate students to do online banking with them, a custom bike shop, etc).

2. develop a set of three personas based on anticipated users and user types

3. do some real-world research - interviews, questions, online information sources, etc. to collect at least a little real data to add to your assumptions

4. usefully document the personas5. present to the class (about 10 minutes or more if

needed), based on sample agenda on p. 40 of the Dan Brown book.

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Personas Project - let’s start in class

FORM THREE TEAMS (4, 4, and 3) - you’ll need to meet, so make sure you’re able to

1. develop a web or interactive concept that targets you and your peers - describe the function/purpose/features of the site - from the point of view of the site owner (ie: a bank trying to encourage graduate students to do online banking with them, a custom bike shop, an online music store, etc). Make it specific. Companies have names too.

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For next time

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For next time

1. Complete group Persona project for presentation

2. Read MR chapters 4 & 5

3. Weekly coolest thing - keep it focused on advertising/marketing (with or without some level of interactivity). Be ready to lead the class in talking about: Why is it cool? What’s the insight?

Mark Avnet © 2008 all rights reserved [email protected] MASC 609 – Information Architecture Module...

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