6. Personas

After having collected a lot of ideas as well for the hardware as for the software side of the library system, we had a closer look at our users, that means the visitors of the library.

A contextual inquiry conducted at the physical libraries in and near Köln has already revealed types and behaviors of typical library visitors. We therefore extracted some deeper information out of this contextual inquiry and developed three different personas, who should be the basis for the next sketching steps. Hereby we covered the three main types of behavior of library visitors:

• Hunting and Collecting
• Researching
• Visiting with Family

Hans is a 69-year old pensioner, living in his flat in an old building in the historic city of Colone with his cat, Peterle. He has two sons, aged 41 and 46, with his wife, who died 5 years ago due to cardiac failure. His sons live with their families in the county of Köln, visiting him about every second week with their families. In his youth he absolved an apprenticeship as a banker and worked in this area for his whole life. To be able to take care about his wife during her illness, he had chosen the early retirement and has been taking the role of the homemaker for 7 years. As an former fireman, he visits the weekly meeting of the local fire brigade when the official part is over, to discuss god and the world over a beer and play skat. In former times, when his wife was still healthy, they often visited historical museums in the surroundings together. Hans is still interested in this topic, but the frequency of his visits in museums has decreased during the past two years.

Having worked in a bank, Hans knows about computers up to a certain degree. He never had one at his home, as it is something to work with and Hans has always strictly separated business from private issues. Dealing with his DVD player is not difficult for him, as long as it works as it should.

Another hobby of Hans is reading books, especially those with historical components. In his freetime, whereof he has enough, he likes to visit the local library to search for new books covering artistic and historic subjects. He does have some favorite authors, but likes to be inspired to retrieve hidden jewels. As he found out several weeks ago, his library also offers the possibility to lend DVDs, for which Hans is well-prepared with his modern DVD player, a present from his son Peter. From time to time he uses this offer and takes one or two documentations to watch at the evenings.

Nica is a 15-year old pupil in the Gymnasium of Köln in the western city. As she still goes to school, she is living with her parents and her two little sisters in Junkersdorf, an outlying area in the west of Köln. Being the first born she already has to deal with a lot of responsibility in the household as well as for her sisters. After school she dreams of working with children after having studied at the university. In her freetime, Nica loves hanging around with her friends usually meeting in the shopping mall of the inner city. For 2 years she is actively participating in the cheerleading team of the local rugby club. This allows her to follow her passion for dancing, which is her second biggest hobby, after going shopping with her best friend Alyna.

To live without her pink-colored S3 is unimaginable for Nica. She uses her phone to stay in touch with her friends, to browse the most actual celebrity news and to play angry birds. At home, she uses the computer of the family, but beside doing homework for the it-class and preparing presentations she primarily uses facebook. To the continued dismay of her parents, she uses facebook very frequently. Once she has saved enough money, she wants to buy her own laptop.

When Nica was younger, she read a lot more books than in these days. Today, there is not that much time left as she has to work quite hard for school to be able to fulfill her dream to study education. But sometimes, when she has to research for a presentation at school, she uses the library to work. Due to her two little sisters, there is always trouble at home, so she comes to the library to work in a calm and motivating surrounding. As her teachers don't normally don't like, when pupils are just refferencing to the internet, she really appreciates the fact that her local library also offers a science area with thousands of books to scientific issues.

Anne is a 36-year-old women living in the developing area of Mülheim with her husband Frank and her 4-year old daughter Emily. She is a working mom, assisting in an attorney's office half-day for four days a week. Beside her daughter, her biggest hobby is theater but rather watching than playing. Getting lost in another world, watching actors telling their story helps her to push away the stress of the daily routine for a few hours. Although she likes to care about her family and her job is really fun, for her it is very hard to relax during the week due to her workload. A fortiori she is enjoying the weekends, when she can spend some free-time with her family.

Computers are everyday routine for Anne. During her secretarial job in the office she works permanently on the computer and she also owns a personal computer at home. Nevertheless she doesn't use the computer very frequently for personal issues. Normally the computer is just turned on when she has some actual matters to do, like informing about the holidays or from time to time shopping clothes for her and her family. Anne owns a handy, but it is not one of the modern ones, as a telephone should serve to talk to someone over the phone and not for more things.

Anne likes to visit the local library with her daughter, especially during the week in the evenings, before Frank comes from work. Visiting the library is therefore most of the time searching for books for Emily, depending on the story Emily is addicted to at the moment. Now it is fairytales and princesses, but this changes every week. Sometimes, Anne visits the library with the whole family at the weekends. During these visits, while Frank is watching Emily, Anne browses for books for herself, normally those covering stage plays or stories of actors.

5. 3D-Prototype ——————————————————————————————————— 7. Storyboard