In this month's episode, Michael Sauers will talk with Jennifer Koerber, Web Services Librarian at Boston Public Library, about User Personas and Libraries. Any marketer or web designer will tell you that creating user personas is a great way to target your services, but just how do you do that? What are the steps involved, and how can we narrow the wide variety of people we serve down to a few "types"? By brainstorming, collecting data and talking to your users, you can make tools to help you develop new programs, focus a marketing campaign, or redesign your website. In this brief overview, Koerber will introduce the basics of persona-making and give you resources to go through the process yourself. NCompass Live - April 20, 2011.

1. Who's Out There? Personas in 15 Minutes Jennifer Koerber Web Services Librarian Boston Public Library

3. Faces and Voices

4. Faces and Voices

7. What’s in a persona?

9. What’s in a persona?

10. Who are your users?

11. Who are your users?

15. Getting Data Qualitative (insights) Quantitative (validation) Goals & attitudes (what people say) Behaviors (what people do) from The User is Always Right by Mulder

16. Exercise 1: Who ’s This?

17. Meet Chuck

18. Chuck & Emperor Norton ’s Stationary Marching Band

19. Personas for physical spaces

20. Personas for physical spaces

21. Personas for digital spaces http://www.flickr.com/photos/carpevia/3908268797/

22. Personas for programs http://www.flickr.com/photos/smcl/1065624977/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleeker/3737583649/

23. Personas for marketing http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/3202378280/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/109470648/

27. Useful Resources David Lee King Steve Madder Ginny Redish