By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Quick Guide to New USAToday.Com Features
Interesting. USA Today has redesigned their website to embrace Web 2.0 features wholeheartedly. Is the world ready for a USA Today Social Network? As Scott Karp reports, the first reviews from readers have been negative. Very negative. But I wonder. The first complaint is from a person looking for the commodity prices. This must be the only person in the world getting their commodity prices from USA Today. That doesn't mean they're totally off-base. The front page is too busy. But what do you make of this comment. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The UXer’s guide to user personas
JustInMind, 2019/02/07
I'm not totally a fan of personas, because they encourage stereotyping, but they help designers create use cases, so they're relevant in most aspects of e-learning. This page is a decent introduction to the development and use of personas, and even has a link to a PowerPoint personas template. The idea is that the persona is based not on the stereotype but on actual data. "Having the right facts at hand can provide a designer with invaluable guidelines about what their ideal users actually want and will find useful". More...