RE: Are you using personas? (take II)

Subject: RE: Are you using personas? (take II)
From: "Miller, Alan" <Alan -dot- Miller -at- prometric -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 09:09:35 -0500


John, I can't dispute the utility of the technique. I've been using it since, uhm, well back in the last century <G>. When I was in the business of training technical experts to be trainers and/or writers, one of the techniques I taught was to write as though you were explaining the topic to someone you knew, who would be using the manual; and to instruct to selected students in the class, who might be problematic.

What I can't see any particular utility to is spending time (and money) creating a fiction. Just pick out someone who fits and get on with it. Of course, if someone wants to _pay_ me to do it....

Al Miller
"Chief Documentation Curmudgeon"
Prometric, a part of The Thomson Corporation
Baltimore, Maryland

Everything is funny as long as it happens to someone else.
-- Will Rogers

-----Original Message-----
From: John Posada [mailto:JPosada -at- book -dot- com]
Sent: Thu 1/30/2003 4:14 PM
To: Miller, Alan; TECHWR-L
Cc:
Subject: RE: Are you using personas? (take II)


<snip>

Alan...actually, until this discussion, I did not believe in their use. To
me, they were for gaming.

However...they are similar to what I've been using as the target of my
documentation. I wasn't kidding when I said I refer to my reader as Igor,
since many of the people who work here, including my boss, are Russian.

To the people here that I talk to to get information, it is real easy to
visualize the type of person who would be on the graveyard shift, with
nobody to talk to, here only a week, and experiencing critical or major
network errors.

In fact, it's to the point that when I ask a developer "What would Igor do
in this situation?", they now know exactly what type of reader I'm writing
for.

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372



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