Assignment 4: Personas and Scenarios

Her name is Amrita Balan.

A divorcee and a single working mother of a 12yr old son. Strong-headed, independent, stingy and sometimes dominating, she works hard for a living. She also takes care of her elderly parents, who live with her, and has high hopes for her son, sometimes pushing him to the limit. She loves him dearly, but is not one to show it...

 The time passed by as we built up the character of the lady who was was to be Ms. Balan; her complex life, relationships she shared as well as the hardships she endured. They more we as a group worked on creating Ms. Balan, the more we realized that we knew her, understood her. Her vulnerable side may be feel like a 'Nothing' in the world, but to us she was Someone. She was a persona created by our group of 3. She was an unconscious amalgamation of people each one of us knew in the real world.

We dwelt a lot into building Amrita's life- from the kind of car she would possess (a second-hand dark blue Maruti) to the number of times she would visit the chat-walla (although she has a sweet-tooth too). We also worked on the way she dressed and her daily hectic schedule.

It required some thinking in the beginning. We even brain-stormed by discussing and looking into personalities of the 5 businessmen we had earlier interviewed. But later we left it all aside and created a persona of our own. We discussed what her story was to be; her personality, relationships, life, family and job followed easily. We felt like we had just discovered her, rather than created her. It may seem a bit 'heavy' to say something like that, and we may come off a bit fake, but the fact remained that the character just seemed to build herself.

The reason for creating a persona was not clear in the beginning. It just seemed to lengthen the solution-seeking process. Later, however, I realized that my thinking was all off.

Seeking a 'solution' is not always the aim. Also, building a persona meant that we understood the persona a lot more personally. Its like designing a mobile for your mother rather than for a large heterogeneous group of all ages. Picking one helps us in concentrating a lot more on their actual behaviors and habits- in understanding the person. A lot more ideas are likely to arise. And who knows, these ideas may just apply for others as well!

A lot of attention nowadays is spent by companies on giving special attention and catering to the individual needs of their customers. It seems like we are pretty much on the right track then by incorporating that into the process of designing itself.