Reflection on 29 Jan class

The class activity was actually to judge from the photo of a product on what target audience the product is meant for and come up with a imaginary subject. Through the activity, I realised that to come up with the target audience is pretty much easy, but to come up with a specific imaginary subject is tough! I guess to paint the persona, one has got to be very specific, exclusive and the key is really to know and understand each individual consumer is pretty much distinctly different.

Geri and I came up with a subject, and the comment is that it was good but not specific enough because there is still alot of such people around. So the assignment 2 will be a second attempt to better the skills of coming up with a good imagery subject that one can really visualize.

However, before embarking in the assignment I guess there is a need to understand the subject of the matter more. Why is there a need to paint a specific persona? I had the same question as Mike. Having designing a product by keeping a specific person in mind, wouldn't it be way too subjective and narrow? Also, in reality, commercial success is the main aim of producing all products. Can selling to one person ensure commercial success?

After reading the readings to look for the answer, I realized that there is indeed a need for a persona. It is the key to commercial success. In her article, Alison Head put forth the same doubt: How can designing for a single soul possibly ensure an interface that supports the needs of many users? Based on Alan Cooper's view, she argued that "personas introduce designers to hypothetical users who have names, personal traits, and habits that in a relatively short time become believable constructs for honing design specifications." Such personas are "stand-ins with archetypal characteristics that represent a much larger group of users." In order to have a strong sense of what users' goals are and what an interface needs to fulfill them, designers need to have persona.

Additionally, as argued by Tina Calabria, by creating a product through analysing a group, the data collected from them will end up to be a endless list with no priorities. Such approach has no directions and the ending of such will be designing a product that targeting no one at all. By using personas, it is like enriching the market segmentation technique, where designers can identify the type of users profile in.
Lastly, as argued by Paul-Aumer Ryan, in order to create an emotion design, knowing one's audience is very important. Idyllic designs can never exist due to individual differences in cultures. As such, if designs are geared towards being idyllic by focusing on designing for the masses or a group, it will not succeed. He argued that designs must gear towards hedonism, where there is a match between the emotional effect of design and emotional effect of situation to achieve emotional designing. As such, in order to gear towards hedonism, it is more effective to have a single subject in mind.

With all these arguments, it is evident that there is indeed a need to create a persona in the process of designing a product...