Conveying Emotion & Personas

Because 'the need for designers and developers to understand human behavior has grown', new ways to accommodate technology to the needs of users have been smartly developed. The article on personas started out a little ridiculous sounding to me and I began reading this article thinking that personas were a waste of time and money...then I remembered how much I love Urban Outfitters' more spendy, more chic sister-store, Anthropologie. I know a few people who work in the store, and I have been given the inside scoop on aspects of their training. In one stage they are required to read stories about a set of women. These women have names, personal preferences on what they do with their time, fears, passions, and particular fashions. They inform their employees about these woman because the store is seamlessly separated into sections regarding this set of women. After hearing this, I realized a reason I love Anthro so much...I feel comfortable there. When I walk in, I do not get overwhelmed, but I meander to the section of the store where I typically find my favorite items. When I subconsciously understand I won't find anything appealing in a particular section of the store, I do not stress that I didn't look hard enough for hidden treasures, and I move on. I believe Anthropologie uses the same Persona technique that the article's software company used. 

So even though I was skeptical of the Persona technique at first, I see that it works. After reading on in the article, I found that I was more and more convinced of it's effectiveness. It is important for any company selling something to be relevant to an array of users. 

Excitement for a product also shines through from producer to consumer, and as the article states, 'personas were not critical to this process, they served as a springboard that inspired creation.' It seems to me to be much more exciting to design with an actual human-being in mind, rather than designing for the ambiguous person that may or may not be like you. 

the earthy girl, the tomboy, the chic.

Directed Story Telling

Since beginning my journey as a graphic designer, I've been informed that design needs to be conceptual. It is not simply enough for graphic design to be beautiful and only beautiful, but it is essential that it serves an intentional purpose. 

I'm not sure why I'm having these bouts of grade school recollections lately...but here is another: In 5th grade, I was a pretty smart kid. I was sent to the 'talented and gifted' classroom a couple times a week, which basically meant I had to endure a few hours with a scary woman who, on a daily basis, made me want to poop my spandex stirrup pantalones. One day, according to our elementary desires for future professionalism, she divided the classroom into two. I have always wanted to be an artist, a graphic designer in fact. So there I stood on the side of the classroom that said teacher designated me to. I was part of a small group of other creative kids, separated from the larger group who wanted to be teachers and doctors, veterinarians and firefighters. After the organizing had been done, she told us what this really meant: 

The larger group of kids aspired to help people, the rest of us did not. 

At the time, all I knew was a guilty pit in my stomach, I thought that maybe I should try harder to want to help people. I tried on different goals, the vet, the teacher, the doctor...they never felt true to who I was. But as I grew and began pursuing design, I realized that design does help people, in

 unconventional and unnoticed ways. 

This article about directed storytelling pinpoints and integrates exactly why I've always wanted to do design. 'To produce communications that resonate beyond our own experience'...'using methods and tools that will help us understand what is meaningful'. To delve into a culture to understand how to touch and improve people's live in relevant ways. I enjoy learning about people and I loved Clandinin and Connelly's quote "to do research into an experience...is to experience it." I will keep this article/technique for future reference when needing to gather significant ideas for what is most important for my audience or client. 

Sabrina Ward Harrison is a designer who may not use directed story telling, but creates to improve peoples lives. 

Audience as Co-Designer & Cultural Probes

I remember my relationship with my parents when I was in high school. When I was told to do something, I bitterly did it or did not do it at all... yet, were I to come up with the same task myself, I would do it with joy.

Analyzing this now, from my less adolescent perspective,  I see that I reacted this way for a few reasons: 

1  I knew I was capable of taking care of the task without lecture

2 The advice was coming from a direction which I could not relate to nor could relate to me 

Somehow this thought reminds me of why it is important to encourage people to solve problems themselves, rather than to flat out tell them how. 

Also, in order to touch people with impact, 

it is important that people feel understood.

This article about the HIV prevention campaign in Kenya explains that the creative team included members from their target audience in order to effect culturally appropriate aesthetics for cross-cultural communication. Research had shown that 'clear transmittance of information occurs when the encoders share the same culture as the decoder's, so the Kenyans designed their own propaganda using their own visual language that would help get their message across boldly. 

People have an innate ability to seek out similarities and evidence of understanding, 

and in that understanding they find something they can trust.

With trust comes devotion

with devotion comes action.

And after being part of social action art projects and reading articles such as these, I realize that any campaign pitching something that invokes action from the audience should actively include the audience along the way...

connecting people with

similar understandings,

similar passions,

similar issues,

and similar experiences. 

Plus, should not only art, but life be about connecting people in order to make living a little easier and less lonely anyway?