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Notes Design Blog

A "Power user" persona-- do you have such people?

Mary Beth Raven  November 21 2008 11:11:27 AM
Greetings conscientious customers,
In the design group, we thought we might need a "power user" persona. We were doing some work on things like the Composite application Editor and the Notes Widgets,  which are (in theory at least) targeted to a "power user." So, Sheri Branco on our team volunteered to do some interviews and draft a power user. See our draftbelow. It's pretty rough because we are having trouble finding people to interview.  Please read our draft and let us know the following:

Do you have anyone like this at your company?  
  • If so, are these the tools s/he uses?
  • Does s/he use other tools? which ones?
  • What are 1 or 2 specific "Advanced user"things this person might do?
  • Can you volunteer any of these people for an interview

Thanks,
Mary Beth

Our Draft:

Dan [insert  last name] is a Market Analyst at Renovations Inc., reporting to Marketing Manager [insert mgr name].  He is based in San Francisco, CA

Dan has been working at Renovations for 12 years and has been in the Marketing department for 7 years.  Dan initially started his career at Renovations working as part of the IT department and answered support calls coming from Renovations employees.  A little over 5 years ago, Dan made a transition into the Marketing department and his responsibilities include data collection and analysis to gain information on current and potential markets for Renovations products and services.  Dan is also is part of a small market research task force that gathers information on Renovations Inc's competition and reports back on potential market trends.

Dan's Work

Dan has a number of responsibilities in his role as a Market Analyst for Renovations Inc.:
  • Act as Team Lead in the Future Products group that assesses current product needs within the market and identify possible products to include in Renovations sales in the future
  • Coordinate test market activities prior to roll out of a product to all of Renovations stores
  • Evaluate customer satisfaction with the overall store experience and with the products offered within the stores
Dan's prior experience in the IT department allows him to provide Lotus Notes expertise that his greater team can benefit from.  That experience also helps Dan be less inhibited to try different features out within Notes or Domino Designer and he continues to learn from others and disseminate information by investigating what others have created.  While this "power user" knowledge of Lotus Notes isn't required for Dan's current job role, it definitely helps and is put to good use.   Some of Dan's additional responsibilities that have developed as a result of his previous role in support are:
  • Creation and maintenance of a few databases that act as repositories for the marketing information gathered
  • Developing kiosk-accessed Notes-based surveys to determine the customers' satisfaction
  • Helping team members set up customized Notes views that allow them to tailor the information to their needs
  • Providing assistance to group members when they need help with Notes or could benefit from a Notes feature that he can show them; such as mail Rules,  Archiving (to avoid deletion of mail due to a company quota), local replicas (to use the marketing databases when off-line etc.) Dan feels that his background has helped him know and understand the more complex features of Notes but he believes that having a technical background isn't necessary to understand and use these features, so he often takes the time out to explain and show them to  his co-workers.


Tools
  • Lotus Notes Client 8.0
  • Mail, Calendar, Contacts.  Dan makes use of Replication and Archiving in Notes.  His department at Renovations has a 60 day retention policy for mail and Dan likes to continually archive so that he can keep all his messages for future reference.  
  • Notes databases created for his Marketing group.  Dan likes to customize views in these databases to fit his needs and shares this information with others so that they are able to modify the views themselves, or he will help them do it if they aren't able to do it on their own.
  • Dan is sometimes able to find what he is looking for by searching even though he doesn't use the "more" advanced options.  He is often frustrated because he has multiple databases and has to try to remember which to search in (or search all of them).  
  • Domino Designer 8.0 - Dan uses this for basic updates and maintenance for the databases for his department that he had created based on Notes templates.  
  • Microsoft Office
  • IBM Thinkpad T60
  • IE 6
  • Blackberry and Blackberry Desktop Manager