[games_access] persona

[d. michelle hinn]

Hey -- great reminder of a course I took MANY years ago -- a guy 
named John M. Carroll  who used to be at Virginia Tech (I was in his 
course) and is now at Penn State that has been doing work on scenario 
based design that I think also fits in here -- it not just covers the 
persona but also their context. I'm wondering if it was someone from 
Carroll's group that was the presenter at CHI 2006?

This is what we also have in mind for the book so I think that by all 
means we should start working on these. We've used some persona in 
other papers but taking it further would be great!

BUT...and I have to tell this funny story...one thing that was kind 
of funny from the Microsoft end of things was that when I was working 
there -- and keep in mind that the games group was way off the main 
MS campus -- the artists scanned in the posters and put up NEW fliers 
that had "Why is Bill Gates so happy?" And instead of saying that it 
was because he was using Microsoft XP and just made a great deal...it 
was because he was sitting in a bowl full of jello. LOL.

Michelle

>Hi,
>
>I had an idea that I picked up a while ago while I was at CHI 2006 
>last year, I found it last week while going through old notes. At 
>Chi2006 there was a talk on microsoft office and one of the 
>interaction designers showed how microsoft uses  persona' to help 
>design software. E.g. there would be a grandma called betty (making 
>these names up) who would use word to write a letter to her son. 
>There would be a 12 year old schoolgirl called emma who would use 
>word to write a school paper on dinosaurs. There would be a 'dad' 
>who would use excel to calculate car payments.  etc etc, there were 
>about 6 of these personas on big signs with a name, a photo, some of 
>their hobbies and some sentences indicating how they would use a 
>particular Microsoft application. (i'm not exactly sure what was on 
>there). They would hang these persona's as posters in offices in 
>microsoft so the developers would be aware for who they were 
>designing for. At some point they would not notice the posters any 
>more but these persona's were very much embedded in the development 
>of software and were always references in discussions. E.g. they 
>would consider adding a complicated feature in excel that could help 
>dad more easy but that would also make the interface more difficult 
>for tommie, etc etc.
>
>I was wondering whether we could do the same for disabilities? If we 
>can actually provide developers 4-6 persona (covering most 
>disabilities) I think it would be an helpful tool which can 
>facilitate discussion and will also allow more clearly to focus the 
>development of a game to include disabilities.
>
>I was thinking of doing it for my collection of patterns already 
>because i think its just more personable to develop for "blind 
>bettie" and show a picture of a girl that is actually blind than 
>just use "visual impairments".
>
>Any ideas/thoughts on this?
>
>cheers Eelke
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Eelke Folmer                                          Assistant Professor
>Department of Computer Science &       Engineering/171
>University of Nevada                         Reno, Nevada 89557
>Game Quality                   usability|accessibility.eelke.com
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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