About the Project
This website is where you will find information on the survey interviews, personas, and website mock-ups that the MATRF staff created for Clemson's College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities (CAAH), in anticipation of the upcoming site redesign. The site has been created using the new Clemson look and feel guidelines, including color schemes, font choices, and more. For more information regarding this site or the MATRF and our mission, contact Dr. Tharon Howard at tharon@clemson.edu.
What Is a Persona?
The data used in the construction of our CAAH mock-ups were used primarily off of personas we created from data garnered from more than 25 interviews.
According to Usability.gov, a persona is:
A description of a specific person who is a target user of a system being designed, providing demographic information, needs, preferences, biographical information, and a photo or illustration. Typically, multiple personas are developed in the early stages of design that represent the spectrum of the target audience. Personas are one piece of a "scenario", the other piece being a description of how this person would typically interact with the system being designed.
The point of developing personas is to avoid the trap of designing for the "average" user that doesn't actually exist, and instead to make sure that the system will work for somebody specific rather than no one in particular.
Project Resources
In addition to in-depth research garnered from Google Analytics, we also did extensive online research before creating our surveys, mock-ups, and personas.
Just a few of the resources we used while completing this project include:
Usability First
Usability.gov
Cooper Journal: Perfecting Your Personas
Whispered Advice to the Graduate: Personas
OpenUsability.org
User Personas In Usability
Practical Persona Creation
Personas (A-Z of User Experience Design Resources)
About the MATRF
The Multimedia Authorship Teaching and Research Facility (MATRF) at Clemson University was founded in 1995 and made possible by a $127,000 grant from IBM to support graduate school instruction. Today, the MATRF continues to thrive as it contributes to the education of undergraduate and graduate students and provides a myriad of benefits to faculty in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities (CAAH). MATRF users have access to industry-standard software to produce professional quality web, print, and multimedia publications, and may checkout digital cameras, video cameras, voice recorders, and more. The MATRF also has scanners, burners, lighting kits, and cameras available for use within the facility, and is a popular classroom for faculty to hold undergraduate and graduate seminars that focus on technology. The major advantages of this unique facility include education and employment for graduate students, partnership between professionals and students who work on client-based multimodal projects, and the continuing education of the campus population.
Graduate students in the Master of Arts in Professional Communication (MAPC) program staff the MATRF. This assistantship is a highly sought after position that relates both educational and professional development for MAPC students and often leads to valuable employment opportunities directly upon graduation. Students who work in the MATRF benefit from the unique opportunity of hands-on learning with the technology they use in the classroom and while working on projects for the university and the Clemson community. They also gain valuable teaching and tutoring experience, by training students, faculty, and staff on a wide variety of software applications and technological tools.
The MATRF staff consults with clients within the university and with businesses around the state of South Carolina on professional-level web, multimedia, and print design projects. The MATRF staff specializes in projects that include digital video editing and production, podcasting, web site development, document design, animation, graphics and images design, and multimedia research. Clients are giving back to the university each time they work with the MATRF because proceeds directly fund the facility and its mission. They are also stimulating the South Carolina economy, as the job skills that MATRF staff members learn while on the job are continually a top reason for receiving gainful and meaningful employment after graduation.
The benefits of the MATRF are not solely specific to CAAH, but they also extend campus-wide in the form of weekly Multimodal User Group (MMUG) sessions. All students and faculty members at Clemson University are eligible to attend MMUGs, which are comprised of a grassroots community of faculty and graduate students who share tutorials relating to different technologies. The MMUGs allow undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty the opportunity to learn software that is not instructed during class from their peers or fellow colleagues. The MATRF sponsors these MMUGs and works with interested presenters to schedule events and offer technological support, while also marketing the events across the Clemson community.
