Introduction
Before reading the article, have a look at this dialogue quoted from Page 124 in the book of “The Road of Interactivity Design”.
Programmer:” What if the customers want to print this?”
Manager:” We don’t think we need to add the printing function in the 1st version.”
Programmer:” But maybe someone wants it.”
Programmer:” Well, yes, but can’t we postpone the implementation?”
Manager couldn’t give abundant reasons to persuade Programmer, even though his decision that isn’t convincing is right. Because adidas tells us that impossible is nothing. It’s impossible to resist the “possible logic” of the programmer.
I think most people within this industry in brainstorming conferences or projects meeting encounter many conditions like the following.
A:” The customers maybe do it like this……”
B:” But I think they maybe do it like that……”
So, the attendances come into being two parties, and no side is persuaded after keen arguments. Why do the customers using the same product have different habits and interests? The answer is very simple. Because the customers they are talking about are just themselves.
What’s a customer?
To be brief, a customer is a product user. In fact, the concept is not as simple as this. ISO 9241-11 international standards give such a definition of usability: “Validity, efficiency and customers’ subjective satisfaction of the product offering the special users special functions in special environments. “ Since the users which are possible logic and stretch mentioned in the above dialogues aren’t special at all, I’ll emphasize the phrase “special user” here. It says in the book of “The road of Interactivity Design”, “Making the users satisfied is our goal, but the word of “user” could bring trouble and not used to design since its inaccuracy, just like the electric saw couldn’t be used to make an operation. We need more accurate design tools.” Right, inaccurate definition of “user” will give rise to the endless argument since this kind of argument is useless to design. We need to introduce a special user with features, feelings, accuracy and virtualization. That’s “character role”
Character Role
someone will question that why we need character roles, for it’s so simple to discover the concrete users by finding, talking and investigating. In fact, the most obvious method has little effects. The primary reason is that as the sufferer of these questions, the users don’t know what they want or how to solve. If real design is so easy, why are the designers needed? So, character role is very important as an important powerful tool for interactivity design. Even though this role is virtual, it must be refined by investigations and represent the actual users. This kind of design is called “personas”.
Role center design
A new noun “RCD” (Role Center Design) is put forward here to take place of “UCD”. The word “user” is used too much like “user experience”. If a designer who always mentions the users like “We should center on the users and start based on the users’ requirements.” can’t describe it in detail, then he should study more.
Personas skills
I haven’t experienced personas, even though I wish I did. The skills here are the combination of the views in the book “The Road of Interactivity Design” and my understanding to provide some help for others.
1. Make a character role concrete and Name him properly. That’s the key to define a character role successfully. All the members in a team should treat this role as a person in life. If possible, offer this role a table and put his picture provided by the designer on it to get a better understanding. Then, the developers won’t imagine themselves as the users, and the users are no longer stretch. The more concrete the character role is, the more effectively it works as a tool.
2. Create a role table with many character roles. Generally, there are 3 to 12 different roles in a role. Not all roles are needed to design, but they represent our interested people and acts as a reference for our design. Roles are created during the period of investigation. Every story can produce a character role. The more stories we get, the more attributes we should integrate. Then it’s time to integrate these characters and create a role table.
3. Determine the primary character role. At least a primary character role should be determined among these roles in the role table. He is the center of the design. For example, if the design could satisfy a primary character role named DTE, then it could satisfy other roles such as Banlon, Andy, and Stephen. Determining the primary character roles plays an important role in design and wrong primary characters will result in failed design.
Ucdchina has a special column about role design, where every article is good. Readers could learn more from there.
A Case in “The Road of Interactivity Design”
This case gives me great illumination and helps me understand the theories in the former part of this book. Here some content is abstracted to share with readers. You can read Chapter 9 directly if having this book.
The design is about an entertainment system aboard. …… (Some words are omitted here) The designers have visited a lot of users and concluded 10 character roles by refining- 4 passengers and 6 air crew. The design is much easier for there are clear post description and duty for the air crew. So the primary character role should be discovered among the 4 passengers. The following is the introduction of the 4 passengers.
Chuck: a business man and member of 100,000 km club. He flies to somewhere almost every week. His flight experience means he don’t like sophisticated and time-consuming manipulation interface, as well as the interface oriented the beginners.
Ethan: a nine-year-old boy. It’s his first flight without any companions. He wants to play more games.
Marie: a business traveler speaking English besides her native language. She likes browsing the shopping and entertainment pages.
Clevis: an odd old man. He is old but full of energy. His wrists are not very flexible because of the arthritis. He is the only person who doesn’t own and manipulate a computer among the 4 passengers.
The principle of the design is to satisfy these 4 passengers. By analyzing, any solutions which are fit for Chuck, Ethan and Marie are not the same with Cleivs. He feels scared and puzzled with the shortcut ways liked by Chuck and language selection liked by Marie, while Ethan’s keen games make him uncomfortable. Chuck and Marie often travel and have abilities to adapt themselve to any conditions. They will not feel angry if the manipulation is not too much. Ethan will be happy if there are some games he wants. So, Clevis is the primary character role in the project. We design the system for him.
When I looked at this, I was very surprised. I would never think this kind of people like Clevis is the main user without this design method. What a reliable method it is!
Finally, a wonderful change will take place when the roles are added to the project. The dialogue in the beginning of the article would be like the following.
Programmer:” Does Rose want to print this?”
Manager:” No, but Jacob need to print a report every quarter.”
Programmer:” OK. Since they print seldom, we can save some time and energy. We just need to buy the ready-made business printing program without implementing this funciton by ourseleves.”
Manager:” Great, our plan will be completed two weeks ealier.”
Remember to find your users and do interactivity design well!