Overview:
Here are three personas that I have been developing throughout this semester. I have decided to include three because my original plan for this project was education centered; however, that has changed slightly. My original personas pertained to teachers and students (two personas I have kept),but I have added a third persona to broaden my audience group.
Persona 1: Primary Audience Group
Name: Sarah Girl
Demographic: Primary user group. (Currently trying to broaden the primary user group.) College educated, on the higher-end of critical thinking skills. About 28 years old and fully employed in a lab working in a large metropolitan city. Highly sociable both in-person and online. Using Pew Research Data, one can assume Sarah is active on Twitter and Instagram. Therefore, using data from Instagram research, one can also assume that people like Sarah see value in images and digital images that can be shared. In other words, a digital public history site would need to allow sharing capabilities for images and tagging of images.
Descriptive Title: Biology Researcher for UCLA’s Department of Bioinformatics
End Goals:
Sarah’s end goal is to not only learn more about her heritage as a minority within the United States, but seeks a digital tool that is also a form of scholarly work. Due to her background in research, she has a high level of critical thinking, and often employs such analytical tactics when visiting museums, art institutions, and even academic conferences. This public history project needs to provide Sarah, and others like her, the ability to search documents or find official websites that allow Sarah to search said documents. That being said, Sarah expects a digital resource to provide her with links and content to other websites suited for research.
Quote: “A Day of Educational Discovery is the Best Day’
A Day in a Life Narrative and Scenario:
Sarah’s day starts with coffee and reading/viewing the news. She often uses Twitter, Facebook, and the New York Times to get the daily buzz. As a biology researcher for UCLA, Sarah is often in an intense learning environment, but that is what she likes! She enjoys diving deep in her research to find new cells and organisms. Sarah, therefore, is a college graduate with a high level of computer literacy. During the weekend, moreover, she enjoys going to museums and art shows with her friends. Sarah’s curiosity goes beyond the lab and into art museums, historic sites, and history museums. She is willing to explore new exhibits and find new technological tools along the way.
Persona 2: Primary Audience Group
Name: Sally McTeacher
Demographic: Primary group user of 44 years old with at least 10 years of teaching experience. She teaches a public high school in a large metropolitan, urban center. College educated with a passion to learn more – even to learn from her students! Being of black heritage, Sally, like Sarah, has a passion for learning ancestry and the history of African Americans in the US.
Descriptive Title:High Energy Secondary Public School History Teacher
Quote: “Learning is only fun if all are involved”
A Day in a Life Narrative and Scenario:
Sally is a high school public history teacher of 10+ years of teaching experience. Around 44 years old and novice technology user but wants to learn more for the betterment of her classroom. She often starts her day with office hours for student, most students don’t show up, so that leaves about 1 hour of preparation time in the morning. Her computer skills range from MS Office basic products to email and Facebook. According to Pew, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform. Sally is always looking to integrate new topics, tools, and digital elements into her classroom and lesson plans. But these digital tools have to be simple enough for her to understand and, yet, complex enough for students to have fun.
End Goals:
Sally has never lost her passion for teaching and love for her students. She wants to learn just enough computer literacy as to aid in her quest to integrate digital tools into the classroom. These tools have to have clear objectives with structured learning. Not a play game but a learning game. Therefore, like Sarah, Sally wants to give her students a learning tool for her history classroom, a tool that requires a degree of critical thinking and has a strong foundation of scholarly work. In fact, because Sally is teaching in a public, metropolitan institution, and “51% of all public elementary and secondary school students in the U.S.” were classified as non-white in 2016, Sally wants to being in a digital lesson tool that gives both a robust history lesson and provides a introduction into minorities in the US.
In fact, Sally may even recommend this digital tool to other teachers should she find it helpful. This could prove to be a marketing opportunity for the digital history project.
Persona 3: Secondary Audience Group
Name: Alex Youth
Demographic: Secondary audience, secondary school student currently taking AP US History and wanting to be done with school. In fact, Alex is in Ms. McTeacher’s class, and they have a final project approaching on minorities in the US Census.
Descriptive Title: Semi-productive high school student
Quote: “School if fine, as long as I pass with a B”
A Day in a Life Narrative and Scenario:
Alex is very active both in school and out of school. When he is not playing for the hockey team, he can be found studying for tests, quizzes, and working on homework. His passion is to go to Metro State University to play hockey for the university team – Go Ostriches! In this case, he is not a bad student, often getting B’s and a few A’s here and there. After hockey practice in the morning and the afternoon, Alex’s day is filled with hanging out with friends at the movies or, his favorite place, the computer arcade lab. Alex’s computer literacy is very high, and uses not only MS Office produces, but also dabbles in Adobe Photoshop to build fantasy reality world posters that coincide with his favorite video games.
End Goals:
Alex is often looking for learning tools, especially if they are digital. He uses these tools to not only learn the information faster (as he is often practicing with the team), but help him understand context and meaning behind a lesson. Therefore, Alex is looking for a digital tool that aids in his understanding of the lesson and provides brief summaries and narratives of the lesson topic. That being said, Alex is looking for a direct digital tool. Meaning, he is looking for short summaries, to the point information, and downloadable PDF files to view later. This last situation is the most important to Alex. Alex, like others of his age group and fellow classmates, read a majority of their school work online. Therefore, any digital tool or lesson that Alex is working with must be able to be downloadable, printable, or be able to be marked up.
