Sun Microsystems UI Project Personas

7/28/2019 Sun Microsystems UI Project Personas

1/5

Personas: The Sun Microsystems Music Navigator

Personas: The Sun

Systems MusicNavigator

April26,

2008A Persona-Driven Design Solution for Sun Microsystems

Wins


2/5


JOHNNY HILLFinding out that theres more to music than 80s hair bands.

Demographic Johnny is a 35-year-old male1 A pharmaceutical sales representative Lives in Modesto, CA. He is married with two children.

Biographic Johnny spends a lot of time traveling, and therefore a lot oftime on the road listening to music.

Back in the 80s, he was something of an amateur musician.So music is an important to him.

Johnny is solidly middle class and has enough disposableincome to spend money on music and top of the line audioequipment.

Johnny was a dedicated fan of the band Rush in high school.Also favored hair bands and went to their concerts backthen.

He has some nostalgia for those days.2


3/5


He has also grown curious about the influences on hisfavorite bands.

Before the internet, he would sometimes spend hoursbrowsing through record and CD stores. Sometimes hewouldnt even make a purchase.3

Since he has been following music since the 80s, he hasbecome highly attuned to eras in music. He has an extensive music collection, including old vinyl

records, cassettes, and a few hundred CDs.

He presently buys his CDs from a CD store as well as fromAmazon.

He has a Napster account, but as an amateur musician, hehas strong feelings about not acquiring music illegally.

As hes interested in past eras in music, 80% of what Johnnylistens to is 5 years old or more. About 20% is new.

He is mostly interested in rock, although he does have somerap albums.

Psychographic He is sometimes nostalgic for his younger years, passionateabout music, and has been known to watch a couple 70sand 80s Behind the Music episodes back to back.

He is by nature curious. He never stopped being interested in music and still gets

very interested when he happens on something he hasntheard before.

He is interested in musical influences as well as thebiographies of musicians, musical histories, etc. Often atparties he will converse about musical history, and who were

the seminal bands, seminal albums, etc. He has a small collection of rock art, posters, etc., band

biographies, coffee table books, etc. He used to have a lotmore, but over the years they were mangled during severalapartment moves (as well as normal wear and tear over theyears).

Technological

Knowledge

Johnny is comfortable with technology (uses online banking,and a laptop for work), computer literate.

Reasonably up to date on the latest trends, such as variousweb 2.0 applications (although he is slightly out of the

Facebook and MySpace demographic). It also helps that he is comfortable with technology in

generalhe sells it for a living.

Johnny also plays guitar, and has been known to play anoccasional open mic night at the local coffee shop.


4/5


Key Requirements He is quite excited at the notion of a music encyclopedia athis fingertips.

But he needs to have a reason not to go to Wikipedia orAllmusic.com to acquire his musical knowledge. He is lookingfor an interesting experience, one that will draw him in,

Hopefully one that is as much fun and interesting asbrowsing through old record stores.4

In general, for Johnny feels his searching for music onlineshould be as rich and esthetically enjoyable as shoppingthrough the bins in a CD store.

He also wants to learn more about genres of music, thebiographies of musicians, and discover new music.

He would enjoy having a music-related application thatwould have the following features:

o Artists, music, and genres that are browsable by year.You should be able to "travel" backward and forward

by year as well as genre while browsing.

o The cover art should be clearly visible. Also on theartist's page there should be a picture of the bandduring their formative years, conveying something aboutthe era during which the band produced music.

o There should be interesting biographical informationabout the artist on the artist's page.

o He would like an application that would introduce him tonew music based on what he already likes.

Tasks Browsing, searching, and reading up on new music, eras andgenres.

Discovering and sampling music he hasnt encountered.

A Day in the Life of Johnny Hill

Johnny gets up with the help of an old clock radio at 7:15 and feeds his cats. Then he flips on

his home entertainment center to see the news and weather. He gets ready for work, for which

he has to dress business casual. He has a stack of CDs hes burned next to the homeentertainment center (from music hes obtained legally). He also has an iPod with iTunes that

he brings with him on the road.

He kisses his wife and kids goodbye and reminds her that he will be back tomorrow, as hes

driving to San Diego for a meeting that afternoon. He loads into his car his medical

equipment, his laptop, and the music that he wants to listen to on the trip.


5/5


For this trip, hes in the mood to listen to a couple of different groups. Hes packed some CDs

by his old favorite group, Poison. But lately, hes discovered a new band via Aura. He

discovered the band while looking up P-Funk, an early psychedelic rock band that Poisons

band members said influenced them. P-Funks entry in Aura pointed him to the group Spirit, a

group he had never heard of. Spirit was a psychedelic band that was around between the

early to late 70s. What Johnny learned from Aura really intrigued him, especially regardingSpirits guitar player. Spirits lead guitarist, Randy California, had a really distinctive style of

playing guitar, with lots of sustained notes. The sound was achieved not with an expensive

guitar, but one made by Sears and Roebuck. So Johnny found a few samples of their work via

a link on Aura to Youtube, bought an album on iTunes, then burned them onto a CD.

So by the time Johnny gets to state highway 99, Johnny is listening to Spirits Fresh

Garbage, a great tune by a band he had no knowledge of before discovering them in

Auras database. This and Randys other tunes make his trip pass by fast, absorbed as he is

with this and other new musical discoveries, plus tracks by his old standby band Poison.

That afternoon, Johnny arrives in San Diego. His first stop is Sharp Memorial Hospital, where

he meets with doctors, demonstrates some of the medical equipment and attempts to negotiatesome purchases.

Later, after dining with his clients, he returns to the hotel room. He calls and chats with his wife.

Then after that, instead of watching the hotels cable TV, he pulls out his laptop and begins

paging through the Aura database. What other bands were around during P-Funks time? He

finds out about the old album Nuggets, that consisted of psychedelic rock of the late 60s. He

then explores the biographies of each of these bands. What ever happened to these guys?

He goes on Amazon and searches through the books written about the psychedelic scenes. But

by now its getting late. He looks up what the various members of Poison are up to these days.

Apparently, most are still in the music business in some shape or form.

But he doesnt browse through these articles for long. He has another meeting in the morning,so he turns in.

1(Boorstin, 2004)

2 (Cunningham & Britland, 2003)

3 (Laplante & Downie, 2006)

4 (Laplante & Downie, 2006)

Documents

Sun Microsystems UI Project Personas