This week I enjoyed doing my research on personas, a subject that I find really interesting and helpful in usability. In this post I described my own persona for GNOME. Happy reading! 🙂
Demographics
- Name : Mark Jonson
- Age: 21
- Studies: 1st year marketing student
- Occupation: social-media responsible
Work
Mark is very passionate about social-media marketing, and wants to gain more experience in the field, that’s  why he decided to volunteer as a social-media responsible for an organization at his University, that organizes events for students.
Goals and tasks
Mark’s goal is to keep the organization’s pages alive, so one of his concerns is to post quality news and to respond to people’s e-mails/messages every day. Given his responsibilities, Mark has to monitor multiple email accounts, social networks and micro-blogging feeds. Mark’s time is really precious as he must also deal with homeworks and their deadlines.
Technology
Mark is a very curious person, and he likes to be up-to-date on the latest in computer technologies, smart-phones and gadgets.  Mark feels at ease when he uses his computer  and considers himself an advanced user, as he likes to exploit it at its fullest. In order to accomplish his work, Mark uses desktop social-media and micro-blogging clients, as well as an e-mail application that allows him to manage multiple accounts.
Whenever he has an important meeting with the organization where he volunteers, he likes to synchronize his calendars between his computer, smart-phone  and smart-watch.
Mark and Gnome
Mark tried GNOME for the first time on his best friend’s computer, who is a computer science fresh graduate. Ever-since he was fascinated about the fact  that he can easily have access to the newest versions of his favorite applications and he can be informed in real time thanks to desktop notifications .
Hobbies
- Watching Game of Thrones
Hiking
ginadobrescu 
Great sample persona! I thought I’d share another sample user persona I worked on as part of some work we did with a client (a security firm). This client was looking to redesign their website and product data sheets.
Here’s one of the personas we wrote with the client, to represent one of their possible customers. Once we wrote the different personas and agreed that the personas represented their customers, all discussion about the project was based on “is this helping ‘Michael’?” or “does this help ‘Richard’?”:
Michael Banks, 52, is Director of Site Security at an established software company that builds software for government contracts. He has been with this company for eight years, but has an overall 25 year history in technological aspects of security, implementing site security for over a dozen other organizations.
Michael is very meticulous, and takes tremendous pride in his work. In his work, much as in chess, he thinks at least four moves ahead. Michael continuously considers alternative scenarios, and always has a back-up plan.
Michael’s company was recently approved for a high-level government project, and is now opening a new office to support that work. Michael needs to improve their site security to include a state-of-the-art intrusion detection system. Michael has received a list of specifications from the government contract office, and is currently seeking a vendor to help meet those requirements.
Michael’s first concern is ensuring the physical building meets the specifications laid out in the government contract, and that the organization remains aware who is entering and leaving the building. This is critical not only for the security of the organization and the livelihoods of those working there, but also for national security.
Michael is under pressure from his superiors to get this right, to quickly implement an appropriate security system. Failure means he may lose his job and damage his professional reputation. Personally, he wants to be seen as a technically savvy expert on physical security systems and needs. He also must present his choice to his superiors to approve the purchase, so needs quantifiable data that will convince them he made the right choice.
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