6.3 A Checklist for Persona Design


This section deals with key considerations that will help you to zero in on a persona that will best suit the purpose, goals, and functionality of your application. As discussed in Chapter 4, you should decide on the persona before you design the system prompts in detail. Reversing this order will entail a major rewriting task to retrofit the prompts to the persona.

To identify an appropriate persona for your application, consider the following issues.

6.3.1 Metaphor and Role

What is the role of the system with respect to the user? For example, is it a familiar-sounding personal assistant who offers lots of tips and help? Or is the role somewhat more distant for example, a knowledgeable, professional tour guide or stockbroker? Or should the character be still more impersonal, like a bank clerk or a telephone operator, simply asking questions and providing instructions? Consider whether the system is to serve as a communication aid, a provider of transactions, or a source of information.

6.3.2 Brand and Image

Many companies spend large sums on branding and building a corporate image through advertising and other marketing efforts. Brand and corporate image are also projected via a persona, whether or not the persona has been explicitly designed. The persona chosen for a particular application should at least be compatible with brand and corporate identity, if not a chief conveyor of these ideals. As discussed in Chapter 4, the persona must be coordinated with any existing brand the company has, as well as with other customer touchpoints.

6.3.3 End Users

A successful, appropriate persona strikes the user as familiar, both linguistically and socially. Persona design must therefore consider who these users will be and in what contexts they will use the application.

Target Audience

To develop a compelling persona, consider the demographics, attitudes, and lifestyle of the target audience. We can easily imagine how a voice portal for teenagers requires a different persona than one for adults. In addition, when localizing a system and porting it to a different language, you must reconsider the design of the persona. A persona that works well in one culture may be inappropriate in another.

Frequency of System Use

Is the system accessed frequently by the same users? Is it a subscription-based service? Is the user identified by name? If so, the experience should be designed to build rapport or camaraderie with the user.

Mind-Set of the User

The system's persona should be compatible with the users' likely frame of mind. You should use one kind of persona if they are looking for entertainment, for example, and a different one if they are trying to land an airplane or selling stocks under volatile market conditions.

6.3.4 Application

One reason for designing a persona to "front" a speech interface is to facilitate task completion and to usher the user effortlessly from one recognition state to the next, again, by making the experience seem familiar, comfortable, and consistent. Persona appropriateness therefore depends on certain details specific to the application.

Content

The system's persona should be consistent with the application's content. The persona of an astrology voice site is unlikely to have much in common with the persona of a portal for mobile executives. Different personae are suitable for different tasks. Caricatured, over-the-top voices based on popular cartoons may be ideal for presenting main menu options in an entertainment-finding application for kids but not for checking the status of stock market trade orders.

Task-Related Issues

Consider how the choice of persona might facilitate certain key tasks. If the interface is complex and presents many functions couched in a less-than-straightforward mental model, it may benefit users if the persona is cast in the role of a helper, perhaps a teacher, who gives occasional reminders or tips.

The persona should be designed with usability issues in mind. Appropriate design can help solve usability problems, as in the example just mentioned. In contrast, usability can be hampered by the wrong choice of persona for example, a chatty persona for a voice-activated dialer. Dialing a phone number is a quick and simple task. If voice dialing is to bring value, it certainly must be efficient. People will not want to deal with a chatty personality every time they use a voice-activated dialer.



Voice User Interface Design 2004
Voice User Interface Design 2004
ISBN: 321185765
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 117

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