Project 2: Part 2: Project Brief/Persona

Project Brief Step 1: Setting the problem
and Defining an Audience

Using your activity diagram and the annotated "Perceptions/Interpretations", "Evaluations" and "Proposals" begin to determine ways in which the online environment can offer affordances that the physical environment can not.

Along with setting a problem, your project brief will define a range of audiences you foresee as possible users. Identify 3 different audiences. Outline these audiences in terms of your establishment/organization's physical environment, refer back to your activity diagram to help you generate these possible audience scenarios.

These are specific questions to answer in your Project Brief. Answers these questions for at least three different audiences. Bring a draft of your brief to your midterm meeting.

Goal:
What is the end goal of the audience member's search?

Information Needed:
What information do they need to met this goal?

Motivators:
What is motivating this particular audience
member to perform their search?

Problem setting:
What are the problems or obstacles they may encounter during their search in the physical environment? What factors play into this? Consider the variables in audience knowledge, past experience, and motivators that make this a problem.

Affordances:
What can the online environment provide to this particular user that the physical environment can not? How? Be specific.

Project Brief Step 2: Creating a "Persona"

Now that you have identified three possible audiences, you need to select one to develop further and make final decisions in regards to the Goal, Information Needed, Motivators, and Problems. This will be the audience you are working with in the creation of your online environment. You are essentially creating a "Persona". See the reading from About Face about the use and structuring of personas in interaction design.