RSS feedComics and personas
Inspired by Rebekah Sedaca’s Boxes and Arrows post, some workmates and I took a social day out learn the art of comic drawing. I can barely remember the last time I attempted to draw anything ‘for real’ - it’s long been something I’ve decided I couldn’t (and therefore shouldn’t) do.
And, well, I’m still not hugely talented, but I must admit I surprised myself. Somewhere, previously untapped, is a minimalist and amateurish style that I appear to have plagiarised from Julian Opie and John Porcellino.
Of course it was a very fun day, but it’s also not entirely frivolous. Let me explain.
Scott McCloud talks about closure being an important part of the appeal of comics. We see faces in all kinds of inanimate objects: plug sockets, houses, fishsticks - this is an effect called pareidolia. Even the simplest of structures are recognisable: two dots and a line.
But this face obviously lacks detail, state and emotion. So we interpolate these; in effect we fill in the gaps with our selves. In this way it’s possible for us to relate more to a stick figure than a highly-detailed 3D rendering.
And this empathy is precisely what User Experience folks try to achieve with personas.
Now, honestly, I think some people go too far with personas. I’ve heard tales of UX people dressing up as their personas, adopting their accents and basically acting them out over the course of a day. I’ve heard of people decorating entire rooms with the artifacts of the personas’ lives: “Bob’s room” etc.
If you have time to do all that then you’re clearly not busy enough - get on with your wireframes! (Although must confess I do actually like the idea of lifesize cardboard cutouts to take to meetings.)
Comics can be much quicker, particularly if you spend a bit of time up front to create a character sheet, showing how to draw them, what clothes they wear, what their regular scenarios are like. Using these prefab elements, we can knock up a quick storyboard in 10 minutes before a meeting. And the comic can act as the agenda: “Here’s the scenario we need to design a solution for” or “User tests show the following reaction to X. What can we do to improve it?”.
But we’ll see. There’ll be some people who ‘get it’ right away, and some who think we’re just faffing around with cartoons. If nothing else, at least I know I can now draw a passable female arse.
Tags: comics, personas, userexperience, drawing
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