Before I take IFN612 unit in this semester, I have never considered deeply the relationship between the social media and I, also, the persona is the concept with which I totally unacquainted. I always confused about what is persona, why it useful for user experience analysing, and how to build up a well-organized and effective persona. Besides, the most important issues is that how to reflect user’s social media experience upon the form of persona. For completing this assignment, I have done lots of research and finally make clear sense of persona and social media. According to Shlomo Goltz, persona is a kind of approach that aim to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way(2014).An effective social media persona could represent some basic groups of people that we probably engage with in social media.
How do I use ‘research’to create my persona?
To begin with my persona task, the structure and content of persona should be discovered, but more fundamental task is that I need analyse behaviour, feeling, and altitude regarding my use of social media, and experience user-central design research as well. I keep with the social media almost every day and more and more depend on it. It is evolve into not only the dominating social communication style of me, but also the platform where I could access to the outside world and learn something amazing. So far various social media application has been consumed by me for almost 13 years. When I grow up, social media also was renewed and updated, but it always played a significant role in my life. I just act as an information seeker who actively looks for the latest technology, something that I interested and the moments of my family and friends.
Firstly, as for an international student who comes from china, so it is necessary that I use social media keep contact with my family and friends who live in my country. WeChat is the most popular social app in china, and it has almost 7 hundred million users(baidu,2013).Even some people who not familiar with latest technology like my mother and father also installed this app in their smartphone. Therefore, WeChat is the main way that I contact with everything about my hometown. I usually use that take voice call or send message with my family members, it’s for free and easy to use. I just teach my mother how to use that function one time and then she can call me by herself. Besides, it is my first time study aboard, so sometime I still could not deal with some problems like homesick and loneliness. Whenever I missed my home and friends, I would seek the moments or news about them through WeChat as much as possible, which would make me feel better. Although I always browse other’s share, I was not used to make comments for them. I belong to the great silent majority, just like a “lurker”,I prefer to be my friends’ loyal readers or visitors, instead of an active commenter (Heidi Cohen, 2012).That is one of the reasons that I just group myself under Information seekers.
Besides, I’m studying master of IT in QUT. As I said before, I cost most of the time on WeChat, but this also make me in trouble sometimes because In Australia people rarely use that social media to communicate with others. The users of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ occupy the largest percentage of the population in Australia. However, I had never used these social media, because these servers could not available in mainland china. What these social media platform mean to me is that a complete new world where I could experience different culture, meet new friends, and interact with my tutor or classmates for academic purpose. For example, some of my friends come from Japan always chat with me on the FaceBook, I was really enjoy browsing their moments and exploreing interesting culture of them. Follow some topics that I’m interested in on the facebook and Google+ also is one of my favourite things to do. I could easily know what’s going on in the world, and become more critical by looking comments of people from all over the world. What’s more, in this semester, I have two units in which tutor ask us use social media as collaboration approach. I have never experienced this kind of learning method before. After join in the community a period time, I could feel the power of social media and truly realized their positive influence.Such as, In IFN 660,we created a facebook group called script maters for our project team. we share what we have done and the problems that we meet. All team members engaged in our project process and learn together as well. Google+ community is refer to IFN612, students post blog and share their altitude about common topic, which is wonderful for me practicing writing and getting more idea. Well, as an information seeker, I am so appreciate that I’m able to get a chance to gather and absorb a wide range of input through these social media.
After constructing the client’s typical character and describing her user story about social media, an effective persona still need point out clearly the goals and needs of the client. To consider my user story and character, I look forward to using social media keep contact with my family and friends, experience different cultural, improve learning efficiency, keep follow the rapid development of Internet, and even could find an amazing job or start my own business on internet after I graduate from QUT. I’m an information seeker and I prefer to always access to the information from social media, the social media that have good interaction design and could quickly get things what I’m interested would suitable for me. It will be better if there are plenty of technology news and useful website information. If that social media have lots of ads, detractor’s post or political commentaries, and probably will exposure to privacy as well, I will feel uncomfortable when I use it.
How do I feel on the use of personas in user centered design?
Now, my first persona would be created after I organized all the information of my client: myself, “a information seeker”, which is a not easy but interesting task for me. Through this activity, I recognized that what is the user-centred design and experience the whole process of how to building a persona. User-Centered Design (UCD) is the process of designing a tool, such as a website’s or application’s user interface, from the perspective of how it will be understood and used by a human user. (Usability,2013) Designers could not always avoid biased, since they are also human beings. They need some practical way to assist they realized what is best. Persona, one of the effective approaches, represents the real users and plays an important role in design process. In this assignment, it costs me lots of time to consider the relationship between the real user and social media. Such as what is the character of the user refer to social media, what is in user’s best interest in. The outcome product persona would help designer make right decision relatively, keep honest and become mindful of whenever they are design for others or themselves.(Shlomo Goltz,2014)
Reference:
1.http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/06/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-
2.http://heidicohen.com/social-media-personas-what-you-need-to-know/
3.http://www.usabilityfirst.com/about-usability/introduction-to-user-centered-design
Cynthia's world 