Designing for iMIS isn’t always easy; our already large and still growing user base means we have a lot of people to please. Currently, we base our design and feature development decisions on feedback we receive from SMRs, RSEs and information that gets filtered back from customer engagements. While all this information is important, it is still hard when you think about our large user base not to get carried away thinking about a million different user scenarios and the requirements to meet them all. But meeting every user’s goal can lead to a product that while rich in features doesn’t really meet any one user’s needs. Our goal is not to design every iteration and function of iMIS; our goal is to focus on meeting the core business needs of our customers. While trying to meet the needs of all our users we don’t want to lose sight of our goal, so we have developed some new tools to help focus our design efforts.
Alan Cooper, in a book called The Inmates are Running the Asylum, introduced the concept of personas into the design world as a tool for designing for the many by designing for the few. A persona is a profile of an archetypal user, which has been culled together from many different information sources and users. It includes personal information, social history, work history, behaviors, goals and frustrations to name a few. It gives us a name and a face to focus our design efforts. By designing for this archetype, whose goals and behaviors we understand and agree upon, we will be able to satisfy the needs of the larger group of users it represents. This isn’t to say that all users of iMIS can be represented by one persona. We have developed a small set of personas, all of which need to be considered in the design process. As a whole, we think they represent the varying needs within our user base in a clear and consistent way:
· Professional
· Thought Leader
· Interest Volunteer
· Staff
· Executive
Each persona has a story to tell. These stories are not about their interaction with iMIS directly, because that part is for us to determine during the design process. Their stories are about how they spend their day, what’s important to them and what they want to achieve. Our hope is that you take these personas, spend some time and get to know them as people, and that in turn they will live on in the decisions you make everyday in the design and development process. Think about how your work will impact them.
The personas are not complete, however, we still need your help. Each of the personas is posted on imiscommunity.com/personas for you to read, but we have left out some important information. Each persona listed above needs a name. After you have read them, please post any questions, comments and your name suggestion. We will accept names for a week, after that the UX team will choose the winning name. The individual who put forward the winning name will receive a small token of our appreciation. Winning names and the finished personas will be posted to imiscommunity.com