Pat’s Point of View

My latest article has just been published, despite me being on a bit of baby leave. This latest one, Audience personas for the Macquarie University Library website, explores one of the key outcomes of a recent user research project I undertook, that is, a set of personas. Here’s a snippet of one persona:

Nicole the novice scholar

Nicole is an undergraduate student whose course requires a fair bit of research in the library. Students like Nicole, studying humanities and similar subjects, need to use a lot of academic material: books, reserve books and journals as well as media and the internet. However, Nicole is not well equipped for this kind of work when she arrives at university and is unfamiliar with information systems or research strategies.

It was interesting that the existing view of the library audience was that held by many academic institutions—I have had some exposure to other libraries and universities—and while it is fairly logical, it doesn’t really help in terms of designing a website. So the segmentation and prioritisation I recommended was quite different; rather than lumping all undergraduates together I followed the natural ‘fault lines’ in library usage to split these students into groups that make it easier to design and deliver online library services.

In contrast, I found that many ‘higher degree’ students and academic staff were very similar in terms of their library skills and information needs. Thus there is no need to distinguish between them (even though there might be 20 years of experience and respect between a senior lecturer and a masters’ student). It was all about context, we were segmenting and profiling the audience for the purpose of designing a website, and other online services.

As always, all feedback welcome.

See what people are blogging about: personas, user research, online library, audience segmentation

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I am now live on the air…on the net. The latest edition of Gerry Gaffney’s UXpod, user experience podcast, features yours truly speaking on the subject of mentoring. It follows my presentation at last year’s OZCHI and OZ-IA on the same topic, based on my experiences mentoring a group of non IAs through the UCD process to create a new IA for their large website.

I hate to uphold a cliche, but I’m not much of a fan of hearing my own voice. Although listening back to recordings of user interviews, focus groups, workshops and usability testing sessions has meant I am much more used to it than I used to be.

But that said, podcasting is such a great medium for this kind of content, and I was very happy to participate. Hopefully this edition will be as useful for listeners as the previous editions have been. I know I have found it quite useful to hear a concise discussion on a UX related topic, from an expert (although I’d hardly call myself an expert on mentoring). They’re great for when you’re on the bus.

Oh and here’s a tip for you, podcasts of your own voice are great for putting baby to sleep :)

See what people are blogging about: UX podcast, IA mentoring

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I’m so very, very proud to introduce you all to my daughter, Grace. She came into the world at 5:09am on the 6th of March 2008, weighing a petit 3.2kg and measuring 48.5cm long.

The birth wasn’t quite what we expected (more on that soon) but in the end we got what was most important, a healthy baby girl. Jenn did really well, staying fairly calm and focussed the whole time. I did my best to support her but she is a tough little bugger and did all the hard work herself.

The midwives at RPA and our obstetrician Anthony Frumar were excellent, they took good care of all three of us and we are so glad we birthed there.

It’s so cliched but oh so true, nothing can prepare you for this experience. I feel so happy when I hold this little miracle in my arms and see a face kinda like my own, looking back at me.

For the moment, we all really need a rest, but you’ll get a chance to meet this little miss in due course. And thanks to everyone for their best wishes so far!

UPDATE: I’ve uploaded some more photos

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