Draft01: persona discription

Description:
A persona is a fictional character that can be used by interaction designers as a design tool. Personas are given a name, age, sex and often include some family background and occupational information. The aim is to try to replicate a precise image of what a typical user/s will be and by doing so, help designers to focus their attention on specific needs and goals. This benefits the design team as a whole as it provides a shares basis for communication. (Ref: practice in theory)

Personas naturally fit in with the other chosen methods: interviews and observations, scenarios, and can be seen as the middle step in our interaction inquiry. The construction of our personas will be based on the empirical information gathered during the observation and interviewing phase. When enough data is collected we will aim at developing 3-5 different personas or casts, which will then be used as a basis for our scenario construction.

In order to effectively establish our personas are we need to find out more about who the users are that use the wifi connections around Ipswich/ St. Lucia campuses by conducting a series of contextual interviews and by observations. These personas must reflect the data found during the observation/interview phase and observational anecdotes used where possible, as this will help the fleshing of the characters out.