Revising the Personas for my Tudor History Timeline now that it’s not a Videogame
Like the title says, I have to revise my Personas for my project. So do you remember Janet?
Name: Janet
Demographic: Older White Woman in Suburban Area
Descriptive Title: High School History Teacher
End Goals:
Janet will be satisfied with free educational video games that are easy to navigate, teach about the Reformation, and comply with state and AP test concepts. She will not be satisfied if there is not connection to standardized materials, the game interface or mechanics are hard to learn, or if the game takes too many historical liberties.
A Day in a Life Narrative:
Janet teaches as a highschool AP European History teacher in Cheseapeake, Virginia. She finds that often her typical style of PowerPoint presentations don’t keep the attention of her students as well anymore. Since the pandemic, she’s been looking for free online interactive activities to teach for her classes, and wants to find an activity to go along with her lessons about the Reformation. Her principal is open to educational video game lessons, but only if they can demonstrate that they are beneficial for standardized testing like the SOLs and AP exams. While Janet isn’t the best with technology, she has gotten better in the past years, and believes that as long as the user interface is easy to navigate, she can learn it.
Janet Revised
For the most part I think Janet it is good shape, but there are a few tweaks I need to make now that it’s a timeline.
Name: Janet (Revised)
Demographic: Older White Woman in Suburban Area
Descriptive Title: High School History Teacher
End Goals:
Janet will be satisfied with free educational interactive tools that are easy to navigate, teach about the Reformation, and comply with state and AP test concepts. She will not be satisfied if there is no connection to standardized materials or if the user interface is hard to learn.
A Day in a Life Narrative:
Janet teaches as a highschool AP European History teacher in Cheseapeake, Virginia. She finds that often her typical style of PowerPoint presentations don’t keep the attention of her students as well anymore. Since the pandemic, she’s been looking for free online interactive activities to teach for her classes, and wants to find an activity to go along with her lessons about the Reformation. Her principal is open to digital history tools, but only if they can demonstrate that they are beneficial for standardized testing like the SOLs and AP exams. While Janet isn’t the best with technology, she has gotten better in the past years, and believes that as long as the user interface is easy to navigate, she can learn it.
Now meet Chad
Name: Chad
Demographic: 20s, South Asian-American Man in Urban Area
Descriptive Title: Strategy Gamer
A Day in a Life Narrative:
Chad lives in D.C. and works in IT for BestBuy. After work or on his days off, he loves to play strategy video games, but especially history adjacent ones like Sid Meier’s Civilization 6 (Civ 6), Crusader Kings III (CK), or Rome Imperator (RI). One of his favorite things to do is try to roleplay as the leader of the country during historical events, such as playing the Black Plague Civ 6 scenario. He had a history minor when he got his computer science degree from Old Dominion University, but he’s not overly familiar with Tudor history. He doesn’t mind moderate amounts of historical inaccuracies as long as the game or show is fun and entertaining, but he wants to see where the game strays from history without having to search for it himself. He’s pretty good at technology, but isn’t afraid of leaving a negative review stating technical ways he can think to improve the project.
End Goals:
Chad will be happy if the game is fun, has an index/encyclopedia to explain the history in more details, has a lot of tough strategy elements, and has a good appearance. He will not be happy if the game doesn’t have enough strategy or mechanics to hold his attention.
Revised Chad
Chad obviously needs a lot of work, I’m not even making a video game this semester anymore. So I have to completely rewrite him, and it might be easier to start from scratch and just borrow details that can still work. (Of course, when describing demographics, I borrow what I percieve from the copyright free images I find, unfortunately that means Chad got white-washed).
Name: Stephanie
Demographic: White, Mid-Twenties, Urban Area
Descriptive Title: History Buff
Day in a Life Narrative: Stephanie lives in D.C. and works in IT for BestBuy. On her days off she loves to go to Renaissance Faires and dress up in period clothing. Since listening to the musical SIX, she’s gained interest in the Tudor period and learning more about the wives of Henry VIII. She had a history minor when she got her computer science degree from Old Dominion University, but she’s not overly familiar with Tudor history. While she likes historical facts, she mostly likes entertainment, like historical themed musicals, tv-shows, and movies. She wants to learn about the Queens and find out cool information about them, but she doesn’t care about nitty-gritty religious details or anything that focuses on Henry VIII.
End Goals: Stephanie will be happy if she has at least one really cool fact about each queen that she can share with her friends at the next Ren-Faire, since they’re all dressing in Tudor costumes together.
Reflection
So while Janet was pretty easy to alter, Stephanie (though she serves a similar focus of engaging in the project just for fun like Chad) required an almost complete rewrite. Hopefully these new personas will be helpful going forward in this project.
