In the NEPOMUK EU project, we have created standards and implementations for the semantic desktop. Based on which assumptions?
To get an understanding what people do at various companies and what support they need, a set of personas was created. Based on interviews with real people, a persona is a fictitious person that represents a user group.
Here is Claudia, she and her colleague Dirk were the two most popular personas within our project group:
The personas helped us to think about what the software must do for the users, demo the software, create prototypes, and create test data for unit testing. As they helped us, maybe they can also help you, so I asked around in the consortium if we could publish them, and we could, so here they are:
- NEPOMUK personas.zip
- NEPOMUK testdata (this was public before, both is related, so having the link here will help you)
A definition was given by the authors from the Human Computer Interaction Group at KTH:
A persona is a fictitious person that represents a user group. They are based on users studies on real people.
Personas are a detailed description and a visualisation of the users. They have a life, goals and scenarios where they fulfill their goal. They help us to focus on the users during the design and give all stakeholders in the project a clear picture of the users’ needs and requirements. Everyone in the project has the same view of the users and personas are also a constant reminder of the users.
When personas are used in the design work and they make it easier to design for them. They “depersonalise” discussions on functionality and allow the designers to focus on designing for the personas.
you can also find the personas in the list of deliverables:
nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/Deliverables
p.s. The personas were so good, we continued using them at the NEPOMUK KDE Workshop. There, the story continues with news on Claudia’s private life. In fact, she is having a wedding with her long-term friend Berit in Holland! Read the fascinating news and N3 files yourself…