I have been doing a lot of research and investigation into Users and Personas, diving deep into the Goal Directed Design Process. One thing that seems so obvious but so interesting is who the real user is.
Its interesting to think how we start to define a user. After meeting with a client and defining what the application requirements are you try to identity the users and create personas. Getting to the correct user persona is not all that easy. So lets say you have several meetings with Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) which usually are the all knowing people that help collect information about the application or product. On the other hand you also work with the Marketing and Sales teams to help identify the key stock holder requirements to also help define the application. Now these are both resources that are needed but not the best when it comes to building a user persona.
Lets take a look at how users use software. Most users are neither beginners or experts but are intermediates.
Most people performing an activity follow the classic statistical bell curve.
Image curtiosy of getFinch.com
Now this maybe a bit misleading for software applications, but instead of a single snapshot in time this bell curve for users is constantly changing. Beginners don’t stay beginners very long, and experts come and go from expert levels to intermediate levels, due to the level of expertise one needs.
So as you can seen the magnitude of users for an application is the intermediate. Although as we stated before the main connection points for information are SME’s and Sales/Marketing folks. Which coming from a SME’s stand point they emphasis interaction that an expert would understand, and the Sales/Marketing folks would emphasis beginner interactions due to there exposer to beginners and first time users.
So being able to identify the correct user is the key. Building a persona that reflects a user that contains that intermediate user type. The main goal shouldn’t be to cater to beginners or experts, but to understand and get the beginners to that intermediate level and to avoid obstacles that let intermediates become experts.
As many of us know Clients don’t usually see the true value of user research and interviews, but as you can see, it is the most important in order to create a truly successful application. In this economy I don’t think you can create a application without it, that people are going to buy or use.
merhl | 
01 6th, 2009| 
