Document the User Profile - I

You have gathered information about target users from various parts of your company. TTien you interpreted that information to develop requirements and classifiers for the usability test. Having a written profile of the target audience (either supplied to you or formed by your own research) should help you, the designers, and the'developers throughout the development of the product. Such a snapshot is not only beneficial for designing a usability test but also helps the team to visualize the person for whom they are designing 

the product, another benefit of doing this type of analysis. We use the term per person in mind when they are designing, rather than many different types of people. Unfortunately, the person they visualize, in lieu of real data, is often himself or herself, even though the developers may not even remotely reflect an actual end user. So, an accurate picture of the user can be a real boon to the design process because it helps to keep the designers and developers on track. Figure 7-2 shows a demographic profile for the hotel reservation system

web site. This is the type of data you may get from marketing, research and development, or product managers. Figure 7-3 shows an example narrative persona for an archetypical user of the site. Someone in human factors, technical communication, or interface design or even marketing may have created something like it. The user profile you develop may end up being a combination of these and other types of information. If you are using personas, you should develop one for each distinct user group that typifies an aggregate

of several representative individuals.