For week 8 with Kyle in IXD301 we began looking at our content strategy for our Elements project and further into the use and importance of User Personas in a project such as this.
This week we covered:
- Basic principles
- Craft of content strategy
- Tools and Techniques
- User Personas
Content Strategy
This is the planning, development, delivery, creation and management of content either in written or other media methods. Having a strong content strategy creates a journey that allows you to plan out the steps and methods that a are needed to be taken in order to reach the completion of a project.
Its crucial that as designers in this industry it is crucial that with ask ourselves:
- What are you trying to improve?
- Who are you trying to improve it for?
- How do you make sure that what you are creating will be useful for the current reasons?
Understanding these four questions will lead me understanding the importance of design for my particular user ensuring that their needs are met. If I don’t reach to meet the demands and needs for my users then why would they use my product? “Content is appropriate for users when it help them accomplish their goals”.
Needs that need to met in a project can be split into three categories:
Physical – Type of person they are
- Age
- Gender
- Education level and learning ability
- Geo location
- Language barrier
- Device knowledge
- Product accessibly
- Disability
- Time frames
Emotional –
- Personalisation tools
- Recommendations
- Feedback
- Social and contextual networking
- What is expected from other designs out their
- Pain points
Learning Factors –
- Knowledge with software/tools
- Reading level
- Content Knowledge
- Learning Disability
Good content is:
- Clear
- Consistent
- Concise
- Useful
- Supported
- Adding to project
For my Element project specifically I will be wanting to aim to meet the needs of children from the ages of 8-10. And to ensure that I do this I have to take into consideration all of the points above to be fully aware of the experience level my expected users have when it come to using digital products.
To begin understanding my users needs, I have set myself a goal to begin researching into the educational system that 8-10 year olds currently take in primary schools here in Northern Ireland. By looking closer into this it will allow me to discover:
- Educational standards of children in each primary stage
- Expected reading consumption and level
- Knowledge of digital products
- Usage of digital products in education
- Knowledge of science in primary education
BOOK – HOW DESIGN MAKES THE WORLD (Scott Berkun)
Kyle gave us a suggested book to look into to understand further the need and importance of design. This books explains how everything that we can physically touch and see has been designed by someone like us whether this is been created as a physical copy on paper or digitally, our homes, social media, town and cities. This book explains how everything that has been designed starts from someone, somewhere that just had an idea.
With what I got through with the book I thought it was a quick and well explained book that explained the further context around the concept of design in a range of every day examples such as kitchen appliances, homeware and digital accessories etc. Overall it made me more curious to the ways that pieces of everyday objects have been created in the hands of someone who just had an idea.
Understanding your Users –
User Personas – we are not our users, we design for them not ourselves.
Kyle explained to us the importance of designing for groups of individuals and not just one specific group as aiming to design for our group only makes that group happy. This would be important in terms of designing for children as I will have to take into considerations as each child will have a different interest and want into terms of this project as they will all have their own strengths and weaknesses I will have to understand.
Personas – These are user centred design tactics that showcase and represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. Personas are not real individuals but is a person created from the data and research gathered to showcase a range of needs that need to be considered when designing for groups of individuals. 
How are Personas Created?
- Using interviews, questionnaires, Focus Groups to gather information from your users
- Finding patterns in the gathered research to use these to group individuals together
- Design personas of created groups based on patterns
- Draw from the understanding of the users and the models to create user centred designs
- Share the gathered research and models with other team members to share understanding
The reason behind creating User Persona is that they build a story of the users you aim to reach out to with your product by building empathy with users, developing your focus of your project and uses needs, measure the needs of the projects effectiveness and finalise the want for the product.
Having strong research to help create well designed User Personas will ensure that when I design my elements product that I am aiming to meet the needs of all of my users.
Video – Malcolm Gladwell
Kyle played us a Tedtalk video by Malcolm Gladwell and introduced this part of class talking about spaghetti sauce. Im won’t lie when I say that the start of this class started kind of strange and I wasn’t too sure where Kyle was going with the whole sauce talk and when I heard that we would be listening to a 20 minute talk about sauce my mind was already going off the topic.
However, I think to everyone’s surprise this video became interesting and really knowledgable in terms of helping us seeing the effect that understanding your users will have in terms of the success of a product.
This weeks class help me further understand the importance of understanding fully the needs of my users. I must research every area I can think of in order to meet as many needs as I possibly can when designing and creating my application. I will be aiming to create User Personas to allow me to gather as much needed data on my users as I can to showcase my aims and needs for this project.
Task for completion this week include:
- Competitor Analysis
- Consideration of user research (questionnaires)
- User Scenarios
- User Maps
- Wire framing
- User Personas for project
- Visual Atheistic