Requirements in context : Personas and scenarios
A persona is a tool for capturing insights and behaviors of a group of people. Instead of an abstract user, it allows you to design content, products, services, or experiences for a “real” person. It creates empathy, focus, and serves as a social object in a way that’s impossible with the elastic concept of user.
The real value of personas emerge when you use them as a tool for storytelling. And scenarios are a great storytelling tool to use with personas. Scenarios are more powerful than traditional requirements because they put requirements into context and allow you to ask “What future do we want to create?” Scenarios help you overcome a natural tendency to interpret information in terms of old beliefs or assumptions by allowing you to easily generate multiple future possibilities.
[Eg] Gary’s persona is sales, he’s a road warrior
What if you could design an app that supports Gary in his goal of building customer relationships and increasing customer loyalty? Too often, the enterprise systems Gary is expected to work with are deployed to support the organization, not Gary’s goal of building relationships. This results in adoption problems, missed opportunities to deliver innovative solutions, and failure to fully leverage the potential value of an ECM system.
- Joyce Hostyn
(Source: joycehostyn.com)
