Intro to HCI Methods: Personas & Storyboarding

Benefits of Personas in Design

• The main benefit of using personas in design is to create a user-centered design that meets the needs of a specific target audience.
• Personas help in communication with customers by providing a shared understanding of the target audience, enabling designers to make informed decisions about the design.

Limitations of Personas in Design

• A common reason for the failure of personas in design is 'cognitive laziness', which refers to the tendency to assume that the persona is a real person, rather than a hypothetical representation of a user.

Developing Effective Personas

• A key step in developing diverse and representative personas is to ensure they are based on real user data and research.

Ineffective Design Approaches

• Designing for 'everyone' is considered ineffective because it leads to a generic design that fails to meet the specific needs of any particular user.

Storyboards in Design

• The purpose of using storyboards in design is to visualize and communicate the user experience and user interface.
• The analogy used to describe storyboards is a comic strip or a movie script.
• Effective storyboards help to convey quickly the user's goals, behaviors, and motivations.
• Scenarios are used in design to provide a narrative context for the user's interactions with a product or service.

Video Storyboards

• The main benefit of using video storyboards in design is to create a more immersive and engaging experience for stakeholders and users.

Storytelling in Design

• The quote 'Maybe stories are data with a soul' implies that stories have the power to bring data to life and make it more relatable and memorable.
• The primary audiences for stories in design are stakeholders, team members, and users.
• Storyboards help to illustrate the user's journey, behavior, and motivation.
• The main function of storytelling in design is to create an emotional connection with users and stakeholders.
• 'Amal’s Guide to Storyboarding' emphasizes the importance of creating a clear and compelling narrative in design.

Test your understanding of the lecture on Personas & Storyboarding in the context of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods for design, prototyping, and evaluating user interaction.