If I were to design products and services for libraries, what personas would I create for this domain? This question was going through my mind as I listened this evening to Liz Bacon of Devise and Steve Calde of Cooper speak about personas as design tools. This was at the monthly meeting of CHIFOO.

Liz and Steve first tackled the arguments against personas - they're fluffy, they're not actionable, they're expensive, among other things - before laying out why personas are strong design tools. Personas are data-driven - their creation requires research into user behavior, attitudes, goals and needs. They facilitate communication and creative thinking between people involved in product design and development. And because people are creatures of habit, personas do have a relatively long shelf-life even if the contexts and tools in which they work change over time.

What interests me most about Liz Bacon's take on personas is her emphasis that they are design tools to understand interactions within an ecosystem or context in which a product will be used. In this sense, creating personas is not simply gathering user needs or letting users design the product. Users do know what they want or need and may actually articulate them well but they don't always do so from a holistic point of view. It is still the job of the designer to gather and analyze all the interacting elements within a domain of interest. Personas help bring some of these elements to an abstracted level but with some features like names and photos to keep them grounded in real contexts. They are also only one of several tools used in interaction design. Liz and Steve will be doing a full-day workshop on scenario-driven design this Friday.

As far as I know, interaction design has not penetrated into the library world yet though libraries now routinely include usability studies and testing in their projects. Interaction design is definitely one line of thinking that I'll try to get into some more if I am to be involved in designing new library products and services.

Anyway, it was nice to get back to CHIFOO. I haven't been attending their meetings for a year now. I served as secretary for this non-profit group in 2006 and I have very high regards for the dedication and commitment of the group of volunteers who put together these quality programs. And tonight is my lucky night - I won the book raffle and came home with "Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces" by Carolyn Snyder.