Studying personas of our communities helps to get a deep understanding of their goals, values, and lifestyles so that we can design and deliver products and services that match what they need. Stephen Abram, VP, Innovation, SirsiDynix spoke today to the Education Institute about personas and knowing your library community. He talked about what personas are, how they can help librarians know their communities, and presented preliminary results of research done by SirsiDynix & The Kennedy Group, highlighting some of the learnings. Further resources about personas:
http://research.microsoft.com/research/coet/
Grudin/Personas/Pruitt-Grudin.pdf
http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul03/head.shtml
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/
http://www.cooper.com/
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/
newsletters/2003_08/Origin_of_Personas.asp
http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/
perfecting_your_personas.htm
http://www.uie.com/articles/personas/
And a good webliography at:
Stephen also recommends Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates Are Runningthe Asymum “, a basic text on the concept. Stephen’s slides from an earlier presentation on this topic.