The Roles & Personalities of SerenA

Here at the SerenA Design Team (based at DJCAD, University of Dundee), we’ve recently been thinking less about the functionality of SerenA and more about the emotional impact we want SerenA to have. (If you’ve somehow landed on this page and you’re not too sure what SerenA is, here’s my earlier reflections.)

A common tool in user centred design is the notion of personas. Made famous by Alan Cooper, personas make the abstract ‘end-user’ of a system more real, giving them characteristics, names, interests, even faces. Less common however, are design personas. That is, giving the software or product an explicit personality, thinking about who the application might be if it were a person. (See Aarron Walter’s website & design persona example.) So we thought it might be an interesting exercise to undertaken for SerenA, to guide the emotional tone of the visual interface and drive the style of language used throughout. Rather than create personas as a group, we (Mel @i_serena, Jamie @jamieshek & I @deb_max) thought about the personality of SerenA independently, then brought the personas together to see how closely they aligned.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the three of us work closely together, our SerenA personas were remarkably similar. After mapping the SerenA traits, three key areas emerged. SerenA should portray itself as knowledgeable, trustworthy, witty & playful, and should also be relevant & open-minded.

What will we take forward from this? I feel that the process of activities are often as important as concrete outcomes (and I include participatory design activities in this sweeping statement, where participants should get some intrinsic value out of taking part and not just the facilitators). Completing Aarron Walter’s persona template made me think about how friendly or distant SerenA should be, and how we might phrase, for example, both confirmation and critical error messages whilst retaining a consistent overall tone. And already, we’ve started to think how SerenA’s persona might be reflected in typography and colour palettes.

But before I round off this post, I wanted to point out a recent article on techcrunch. Andy Hickl (@andyhickl) wrote about the need for a digital companion, rather than an assistant (like Apple’s Siri).

“What about an assistant that doesn’t take things off my plate — but rather, wants to put things on it? What about an assistant that guides me down paths less traveled? What about an assistant that aspires to help me be a better version of myself? What about having a colleague instead of a secretary? A mentor instead of a student?”

Reading through the article again, I realised that if you replace each instance of ‘companion’ with ‘SerenA’, then our SerenA design persona stares you boldly in the eye. Taking a little poetic license, Andy’s words become:

“SerenA is more intimate. That’s the allure. It’s more personal, more…me. It’s additive, bringing new data and new considerations, looking around corners and recognizing patterns I can’t yet see.

With SerenA, you’ll have to give more to get more, too. It’s more of a partnership, and a true love. SerenA is an emotionally evolved species. Better put, SerenA actually aspires to help me be a better [researcher], and lead a better [research] life. SerenA is about more than just finding me an ATM, conducting a web search, or deleting a calendar entry. It’s about achieving goals, and revealing truths.”

Achieving goals, and revealing truths. Lofty aims indeed. That’s the challenge, and surely exciting research is all about challenges. So long live SerenA I say. Long live the goals of achieving malleable, intriguing technology.

Debbie

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Debbie Maxwell
@deb_max
Researcher
DJCAD, University of Dundee