​​Personas

For the define portion, we took the information we gathered from the interviews and developed personas. Personas are basically fake people, who we make, to better understand our potential users. As a group, we decided to focus on students, parents, and faculty. We combined all the student interview information, trying to make one student persona. Then we did something similar for a parent and faculty persona. However, before actually making the personas as a group, we worked individually to make our own, in order to better grasp the concept. I had some trouble trying to develop mine. I struggled with identifying goals and needs. Oftentimes, I would confuse the two, but with some guidance, the concept was more clear. I also needed to eliminate unnecessary information. Sometimes my personas contained information that had no relevance to the project. 

Journey Maps

After making our personas, we had to make corresponding journey maps. A journey map is basically a visualization that helps to identify a user’s goals and obstacles. Once again, we all worked independently, trying to develop journey maps for our own personas. At first, I thought a journey map was fairly straightforward: identify goals, how a user meets that goal, and so on. However, I quickly found it perplexing. What kind of journey was my persona supposed to go on? I was not sure if the journey was to be entirely imagined or based more upon the information that we had. After discussing the problem with the professor and consulting our interview information, it was easier to find a scenario befitting the people we interviewed. For example, we looked at one of our faculty interviews and referenced some of the scenarios they had to go through.

Collaboration

It was not until all of us in the group developed three personas and three journey maps that we collaborated in our efforts. We discussed and created three new personas and journey maps, combining what we made individually. It was fairly easy to break up the project into sections for each of us to handle. For example, each of us would add one “need” to each persona and then do the same for another. As we were making our new journey maps, we still struggled to develop clear goals for the personas, but I think we managed to create a cohesive system. While working on the maps, we generally found that people really just want more information about anything related to the program, and would like an easy way to contact faculty.

Reflection

Overall, the personas and journey maps were interesting to develop. I thought they were mildly strange at first. Why create fake people and a journey they partake in? However, I quickly realized that they were a further synthesis of the information we gathered previously from the interviews. They are meant to focus our efforts as a group and help identify opportunities or even flaws. Admittedly, I still feel like I have not grasped the essentials of making a journey map, but it was only my first attempt. With more practice, I am sure it would get easier.