Personas are an attempt to keep it real:

Personas are fictional characters designed to help you empathise with people, usually customers or clients. They do this by forcing you to imagine the life, emotions, motivations, strengths, weaknesses and habits of the people you want to reach. Aiming to reach everybody is dumb.

They’re a tool for anybody who’s in the business of service, information or learning - In the broadest senses of the words. This means Information Architects but it also includes receptionists. It’s most everybody who has a job in the 21st century.

The general advice about personas is that you:

• Base them on real people
• Make them as ‘lifelike’ as possible (including giving them names)
• Stick them on the walls and talk to them when you’re designing stuff
• Take the three suggestions above literally

Here are some guides on how to ‘do’ personas:

An introduction to personas and how to create them from Step Two Designs

How to understand your users with personas from Carsonified

'How to' use personas - recommended

Developing Personas from usability.gov

The Origin of Personas by Alan Cooper (who is the ‘daddy’ when it comes to personas)

Crappy Personas vs Robust Personas by Jared Spool

Using Personas to Create User Documentation from Cooper Consulting

Personas and the role of Design Documentation from boxes and arrows

Personas are not a document by Jared Spool

A little thing about personas from Adaptive Path

“We don’t use personas. We use ourselves” from 37signals

Perfecting your personas from Cooper Consulting

Examples of persona design:

Persona Patterns from eightshapes

Persona Pattern from eightshapes

Design Ethnography from Semantic Foundry

Persona Pattern (visit site for larger version)

Real or imaginary: the effectiveness of using personas in product design from frontend.com

Our name is something we are all given at birth and it accompanies us our whole lives. Some people are better at remembering names than others, but no matter who you are or what you do, there is nothing better at making a good second impression than remembering somebody’s name. I’m very fortunate, because I have always been very good at remembering the name of somebody new. It is also something I have worked at improving, and I’d like to share some tips I use to help you do the same.

I would say the most critical factor in remembering somebody’s name is making it important. Think about how YOU feel when somebody you’ve only met once or twice comes up to you and says YOUR name. Well, the same is true when you have made an effort and get somebody else’s name right. If it’s of importance to you to really remember their name, the likelihood of you doing so is much higher.

Don’t be in a hurry. When you first meet somebody new, don’t rush the introduction. As you shake their hand, observe their face and repeat their name back to them in your greeting, “Hi John, it’s nice to meet you.” As you look at their face, is there anything striking or particular about their appearance that can help you remember their name? Do they look like another John you know? If other friends are around you, introduce your new friend – repitition is a great tool to memory – “John, I’d like you to meet my friends. John, this is Mandy… Mandy, this is John…” and so forth.

Building upon repitition, if you are at an event with others, test your memory. Ask your friends questions, “Isn’t that John over there by the buffet?” The more you make a practice to remember, the better you will get.

If it’s a business event where you exchange cards, write some notes on the back: Tall, dark hair, big nose, has a Great Dane. In this case, I’d actually categorise this person as “Great Dane John” and picture him with his dog. The more images you can create in your mind associated with the person, the stronger the memory.

Try this simple exercise the next time you wish to remember names and faces. You’ll be surprised with just a little practice how much you’ll improve, AND how much it improves your memory as a whole.

This is a great added bonus to self-improvement, it is almost impossible to improve one area of your life without it improving other areas too! See how quickly all these little 1% improvements can add up to a whole new you very quickly indeed.

Have fun with this exercise and notice the change…

In original context (in Finnish).

New ambient upload with FFT spectrum analysis done in Processing. Inspired by bell ringing at a temple on the shore of lake Kawaguchi, near Mt Fuji.

I’m still behind on all my RSS feeds after October, so rather than try and catch up, here’s something new(er). Over the weekend just gone, the Personal Democracy Forum – Europe (PDFEU/#pdfeu if you want to trawl the twitter archives) was held in Barcelona. Having only found out about it on Friday evening Brisbane time, as it was getting underway in Spain, I wasn’t attending the conference itself, but through the wonders of live streaming (run by Civico and containing audio, twitter, and CoverItLive live blogging), I was able to listen to the first few sessions on Friday. [The other sessions from Friday and Saturday are archived on the site at the moment if there's anything that looks interesting]

There were several interesting discussions and topics, some of which were unfortunately missed due to sleep needs or being break-out sessions not streamed live, although information on those might be available on the live streaming site now. However, the most immediately impressive presentation coming out of PDFEU (certainly given my research interests) was that by Anthony Hamelle and Clémence Lerondeau of linkfluence (leaders in social network mapping and mentioned here several times previously). In their presentation, they unveiled a new linkfluence project, moving beyond their previous studies of French/U.S. political blogs or (French language discussion of) European topics on the internet. Instead, the latest study (visualisation below) looks at the ‘Eurosphere’ – blogs and websites run by commentators, parties, think tanks, activists, journalists, and so on, from France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy (the analysis also features a Europe affairs-specific cluster, drawing from all four nations). For specific information, I’d recommend going through the presentation itself (with audio available from the PDFEU streaming site), and also the accompanying linkfluence blog post. There’s more information to come, obviously, but a few findings are already particularly interesting: first, the varying bridging/gatekeeping population found in the different national spheres (the French having the most bridging bloggers), and indeed the very presence and function of bridge bloggers (Ethan Zuckerman has written about this subject previously, although not for as specific a context as European (political) topics). The comparative lack of interaction between national spheres is also interesting (bridging happening more between the EU-specific cluster and the national spheres), language could possibly be a factor, although the greater tendency of a particular group (Euro-sceptics and anti-federalists) to engage in conversations across the boundaries of the national spheres makes this finding a particularly fascinating topic for future research (well, maybe)!

There will be more coming out of this project from linkfluence, as the final slide shows, but the teaser material unveiled at pdfeu – and the topical case study used in the presentation, looking at the EU Presidency as a discussion topic over the previous month – suggests that the scope of this study will provide some interesting information on discussions and interactions at an international level:

[Also, from a purely aesthetic perspective, how great (and clean) does the visualisation itself look?]

I’ve been listening with great interest to the tweets on #agile over the last few months. It’s been a great way to understand what people currently think about agile projects and where the thinking is headed in relation to its use. Recently I’ve noticed a growing number of tweets on #kanban mixed in with #agile and so I finally asked the twitterati what kanban was really all about. Fortunately, I was pointed in the direction of Jim Benson of Personal Kanban.

Personal Kanban is a great website for starting your own kanban journey. In essence, Personal Kanban relates that you should:

1. Visualise your work
2. Limit your work-in-progress

There was also an image that really helped me understand what that meant in practice on the InfoQ website that I found through doing a Google images search.

So this past week I set about making a kanban board for my own project. We’re a small team of four: me leading the project, a business analyst and Holocentric modeller, an operational concept SME and the client’s project manager. We’ve just completed the project’s initiation phase and are now headed into its planning and execution.

Of course, like any of my projects, this is done using our ZenAgile philosophy. We’ve chopped up the pieces of the project into small parts and prioritised this scope in relation to the client’s needs and the time constraints of the project. I then did a high-level view of all our activities over the next 3 months, highlighting to the client when we were likely to need to start engaging with stakeholders, primarily as a communication so we could start to book interviews and workshops. I then got out our company’s project management plan template and noted one section that essentially said ’stick in gantt chart here’. After reading an article on why gantt charts are horrible and posting some commentary to PMs myself on the issue, I decided to do my own kanban board instead.

Here’s how I put it together:

• Multi-coloured post-its: So I can immediately differentiate between tasks (green), people (pink) and categories of task completion (blue)
• Individual rows for each team member: To identify who is doing what and what stage their work is up to
• Priority tasks: These are on the LHS waiting to go onto the board when someone has completed a task
• Stakeholder post-its: Because we have to consult with some key stakeholders I felt they needed their own cards. It means at any time we can look at the board and know what stakeholders are being involved in which activity
• Parking zone: The very top row is for parking. It’s when something immediately comes up that requires our attention, or when we’ve got to wait for someone outside the team to action something before the activity can move forward. This allows us to immediately start on something else and yet remind everyone that there’s something that’s stalled.
• Timestamping: If something gets approved, signed-off, or there’s an issue we just write it onto the post-it noting the details, e.g. whether it was an email, who approved it, and when.
• String: The essential bit that marks rows and columns and so we could hang different things off the lines if needed with little alligator clips.
• Alligator clips: These became a necessity because the post-its didn’t stick very well to the felt on the board but we quickly realised it would enable us to clip items of value to each task, like reminders, links to our BaseCamp collaboration site, doodles of ideas on paper, etc.

Already, it’s helping the team and our client’s project manager to see what’s going on. In fact, he commented (jokingly) as he walked past our work area that ‘nothing had moved in hours’! What we also noticed was where the process bottlenecks within the team were occurring. You’ll see already that the guy with the bottom row already has two items currently being worked on. That’s our client’s project manager. He’s so busy with his day job that he’s falling behind on the things he has to do. We’ll deal with that next week

I’m already seeing how useful kanban is with other elements of our project. I had to do my status report on Friday — part of my company’s Quality Assurance process. So I looked at the board, wrote down what we’d accomplished this last week, wrote down what was in flow as well as what tasks were waiting to be started that I could conceive we’d likely start next week.

So would I use this technique on another project? Of course! Here’s why:

• Visualisation: Everyone can see where the project is up to, from the team to stakeholders,  just by walking past
• It’s easy to setup: The team help me set it up in about 30 mins. The hardest bit was actually that the pin board was so firm that it was almost impossible to stick pins into it *LOL*
• It’s easy to change something: Unlike a gantt chart, I can just move a post-it somewhere else or make a few notes on it with my sharpie
• It’s intuitive: What could be harder to understand than post-its on a board and limiting work-in-flow?
• It goes perfectly with ZenAgile: Zen philosophy and agile are a way of life for me. Kanban just fits in with this philosophy perfectly

M

Visitez  Jason Newell web site pour voir un exemple de JT2GO viewer (ActiveX viewer control in a web page)

 http://www.jt2go.com/  pour voir les informations relatives au produit

Whether people around you tell you that you are or not, you are special, and you are unique.

What a marvel that is. Think about it, there are over FOUR BILLION PEOPLE on this little rock hurtling through space, and every single one of us is different, unique and special in their own individual way…! Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t that just make you stop in awe of the power, love and energy that masterminded the universe…?

Even “identical” twins, triplets, etc. are different: their atoms are different, their thoughts are unique, and they act independently of each other.

Commodities like gold, diamonds, etc. are given value because of demand, but mostly because of scarcity or rarity.  Did you know there are many, many more diamonds in the world than there are people? Does that mean you are more valuable than a diamond…? De Beers actually holds approximately one third of the diamonds available out of circulation to “artificially” keep up demand and inflate the value!

Likewise with gold, there is more gold already in circulation than there is a tangible need for (most of it is in bullion, and only a tiny fraction of the gold in existence is actually put to any real use!) Does that make you more valuable and useful than gold…?

Perhaps your paradigm of what is valuable, unique and special is now starting to change. In the whole scope of things, you are as special and unique as a tiny snowflake – surely that’s something you should celebrate, and celebrate often! When was the last time you looked yourself in the eye in the mirror and declared, “I love you, because you are unique and special!”

Go do it right now! “I love you, because you are unique and special!”

Feel any different? Today, and every day, remember your uniqueness: there is only one of you, and there are many things that only you can do. You have a very special gift to give to the world. Be your own radiance and bring that glow to your world.

Perhaps you have great eyes… a warming smile… maybe you are a great comforter… or you may have many other special gifts. Whatever it is about you that you know makes you special and unique, be very pleased about it, enjoy it, share it willingly and often.

Celebrate your uniqueness 1% more today… notice what happens…

Newsmap is a visualisation tool for news. It displays news stories as blocks, the bigger the block the more related stories ie) current relevance. You can choose to look at only certain types of news stories such as technology, entertainment or sports etc or any combination of them. You can refine your searches to specific keywords so that you can immediately see the news stories that you are interested in. You can filter by time to only show the most recent news stories or look further back. News sources can also be limited or expanded to news from certain countries (a limited list). This allows for some interesting comparisons.

The problem with it is searching for more specific search terms. My guess is that it only searches news for the day at its longest period of time (over 1 hour). So, for current events, it is a really interesting tool but it is not too useful for for looking at or comparing less reported or older news stories.

Sourcemap is an Open Source platform for visualising supply chains. Anyone can easily create an account and their own Source Map. Simply, you need to break down a product into its various parts and Source Map will map where the parts are sourced and assembled. I have embedded one of the better examples I could find below.Here is a link to one of the better examples. WordPress doesn’t seem to accept iFrames

Grippe A (H1N1) Un protocole de relaxation/visualisation expérimental en cas de détresse respiratoire a été mis en ligne.  Cliquez sur l’onglet.

Thanks to Gunjan Singh, I came across the webcomic xkcd and their absolutely hilarious visualization of the storylines from a few well-known Hollywood films. My favourite is the Lord of the Rings chart!

To see a larger version of the image, click here

Image (C) www.xkcd.com

Rough clip illustrating the IR Distance Sensor on rotating assembly sending data to computer.

As much as many scientists agree that we merely use a tenth of our brain’s true capacity, it is a very simple muscle: it will enhance and manefest what we allow into it and focus our attention on. I’m going to repeat that below, just so you give it the attention it deserves:

Our brains  will enhance and manefest what we allow into it and focus our attention on.

To our brain, there is no positive or negative, it’s all just stuff. If we focus on bad things and negative stuff, guess what, our brain will try to make us happy by helping us focus more on that, and that in turn will help to manefest negative things around us.

On the other hand, if you focus on positive things, your brain will help you focus on more positive things, which will then manefest in more positive things around you. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to practice focussing on the positive, good things in your life – even to the extent of trying to find the good in everything – rather than the negative, especially if you know it will change your physical conditions?

Today, as you go about your regular activities, become more mindful of your thoughts and what you allow into your brain. If negativity starts to arise, nip it in the bud and replace it with something more positive. Over time this will be a natural habit and be second nature for you to do.

Make it your goal today to focus more on the positive in all things just 1% more, be sure to notice the difference as it starts to manefest…

This is a free to attend event but you must pre-register to attend due to availability.

This workshop will be held on Saturday 9th January in central Manchester and starts at 2pm promptly.

Although many of you will have already started on your New Year’s Resolutions by 9th January, this workshop is designed to help motivate you to keep to your resolutions (in research, only a minority of us manage to do this!). The workshop will utilise techniques from hypnotherapy, NLP and visualisation skills, as well as giving people the opportunity to network and help each other. Therefore, it is an interactive workshop, not just someone talking constantly!

For further information, or to book a place on this workshop, please email gary@okehypnotherapy.co.uk or join Manchester Hypnotherapy and Self-Improvement Meetup Group.

Don’t forget to check back to this blog as these events will be monthly throughout 2010.

Love pie? Hate pie-charts? Me too (cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee, of course). So does David McCandless which is why he has a passion for visualising information. Powerpoint need never be the same again.

Have a look at his site – Information is Beautiful – for his, and many other people’s, interesting visualisations of data.

There is no better way to show strength and trust in an abundant universe and the never-ending well of spiritual power than to give what you lack. Like many ancient truths, at first there seems to be a conflict. How can you give away what you are lacking in? And, how will giving away something you think you have little of create more of it?

Like any truth, the full power is not in knowing, believing, or accepting, but simply in trusting and just doing.

If, for example, you desire more money, do not penny-pinch and miser your money away. This will simply send the message that you do not wish the energy of money to flow freely and the universe will oblige by not sending you more to share. Likewise if you desire to be loved more, not sharing your love will stop more love flowing to you.

Instead, today when you focus on things you are lacking, make a definate attempt to give more of it away – and do so happily. Be strong and condident in the fact that the more you give away, the more will come back to you. Just like a bucket in a rain storm, once full, can only fill up some more after it is emptied. Rather than trying to make yourself a ’storage place’ for things you want, hone yourself into an exquisite conduit to funnel good things through to share with all.

“In giving away, we receive in abundance.”

Try especially hard today to give more of what you lack, and you will be very pleasantly surprised at how much you receive – and even some things more you were not even expecting. This is the natural way of the universe, and all the riches are there for the asking and the giving!

At the end of yoga class this evening, our teacher took us through a 10 minute guided visualization. As part of this she asked us to imagine that the barriers between our mind and the world outside dissolved, what was outside became inside. Clear blue skies, with clouds just passing through.

When we dream, the barriers between inside and outside dissolve, between our unconscious and the collective unconscious, Jung says.

Is it this dissolution we dream of?

Second in Radius series.

Tyson Ibele’s amazing free script will model and create complete cities, and even creates V-Ray Proxies and materials automatically.

Main Features:

• Wide variety of structural controls.
• Automated detail creation for things like windows, ledges, railings, balconies, etc.
• Ability to generate a series of randomized buildings along a spline path.
• Combined meshes can be turned into Vray Proxies during the generation process. The optimized view of vray proxies in the viewport allows for a much higher viewport framerate when displaying buildings. The better memory management for proxies allows for near limitless numbers of buildings in the scene.
• When you generate with path quick-build on, you can opt to “Re-use” the quick-built buildings. What this does is keep re-using the set of buildings you’ve already made in future path generations. So….it can greatly speed up the process of adding more buildings elsewhere in your scene by re-using one’s you’ve already generated instead of making new ones. Of course, if your quick-build value is low you’ll see building repetition, but if it’s high this option can be a real time saver without noticeable problems like repeating building patterns.

More info:

www.tysonibele.com/Main/BuildingGenerator/buildingGen.htm

Via Vray.info

As of On October 26th the newest build, V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4, is available from the download section of the Chaos Group site.

The upgrade is free of charge for all current V-Ray customers of Chaos Group.

The V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2008, 3ds Max® 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2010.

The new V-Ray build supports both 32-bit and 64-bit OS.

Added new feature in V-Ray 1.50 SP4 is V-Ray Ambient Light.

It includes several modified features:

-  Improved multithreading on multi-core machines;
-  Ability to specify gizmo falloff for VRayEnvironmentFog;
-  Ability to use arbitrary meshes as gizmos for VRayEnvironmentFog;
-  Option to exclude the background from VRayEnvironmentFog;
-  Added CIE sky models to the VRaySun and VRaySky;
-  It is now possible to submit DR servers list for DR through backburner;
-  Added option to not use area speculars in the VRayIES light;
-  Added Kelvin temperature settings for the color of VRayLights;
-  VFB history is now turned off when 3ds Max is in slave mode;
-  Output .vrimg and split channel paths are listed in the Asset Tracker;
-  GI cache files (irradiance maps, light cache etc) are listed in the Asset Tracker.

The complete list with the improvements of the existing features can be found in the changelog file, which is a part of the installation.

The V-Ray® RT 1.50 Service Pack 1 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2010.

The new V-Ray RT build supports both 32-bit and 64-bit OS.

The upgrade is free of charge for all current V-Ray customers of Chaos Group.
.
It includes the following new features:

- Support for the HSL/HSV controls of the ColorCorrect texture (as well as the map slots);
- Support for the “Additional bump” slot of the Normal bump texture;
- Some gamma workflows did not work well with the ActiveShade;
- Option to stop updating the ActiveShade window after a certain fixed amount of time;
- Support for region rendering in the ActiveShade window;
- The override material options from the standard V-Ray renderer to work properly;
- Support for environment override in VRayMtl;
- An option to manually restart V-Ray RT, without having to close & reopen the activeshade window/viewport;
- Option to pause the RT;
- Support for opacity maps of standard materials;
- Support for VRayEdgesTex in bump slot;
- Ability to directly export to a .vrscene from MaxScript without starting the ActiveShade (through the vrayExportRTScene() command);
- Access to the ActiveShade bitmap from MaxScript (through the vrayGetRTBitmap() command);
- Support for paletted PNG textures;
- Consider the “Hidden lights” switch from the standard V-Ray;
- Support for IFL file format for textures;
- Support the Shell Material in V-Ray RT.

The complete list of the new and improved features can be found in the changelog file, which is a part of the installation.

In order to explore the rendering opportunities of V-Ray RT you must have installed V-Ray 1.50.SP4 or a later version.