Personas and Archetypes: Envisioning the 21st-Century Special Collections Professional

Personas, as used in the world of information architecture and user experience design, represent an archetype.1 They capture, in a narrative format, a composite of goals, attitudes, skills, behaviors, frustrations, environmental factors, and work or activity flows of a range of actual people represented by the archetypal persona. Of course, in a user experience design setting, personas are based on qualitative and quantitative data gathered from observing and interacting with end-user populations envisioned for the service or interface being designed. Using personas helps Web designers and information architects avoid pitfalls such as overly elastic conceptions of the real people who . . .