About user experience
As an engineer, I suppose I'm very frank and all about the efficiency and functions. For me, a great user experience is fast and to the point. I don't want to waste time on bells and whistles. I have to admit though that the example about the wake-up experience to an artificial sunrise accompanied by bird song sounded quite appealing in comparison to a regular alarm clock. (Though I'm not sure I would wake up to the subtle bird singing and light – after all, I'm a Finn who has never had curtains in my bedroom and we have the midnight sun in summer.)
I guess the reason why I'm interested in user experience is not really about the rare fabulous moments in actually enjoying using a system, but rather to make it possible to avoid the worst ones. It's like reading a book being able to not even notice the grammar mistakes or a silly font. It's about being able to concentrate on what is important. Of course, that is not always simple and it doesn't help that not all people agree on what is important.
"A large part of finding a solution is having empathy with the user." (Greg Hodgson, User Experience Design, UX to UI Class 1)
The need of empathy - personas to the rescue
Personas are a tool for realizing the use situation from another perspective. What is clear to me, might not be clear to everyone else. What is logical to me, might be totally the opposite to another person. This is why we should find out the possible user groups and through imaginary persons representing the user groups, we just might find the points that are problematic and need to be solved.
Credits:
I took this photo in Vuokatti, Finland.