Dogma Scriptwriter turns Attention to HCI Personas

Sigchi.dk has invited film luminary Mogens Rukov to share a professional narrator's methods for constructing convincing characters. Rukov produces scripts for the radical Danish film movement Dogma, reknowned for its realistic depiction of life. He has been involved in most of the Dogma films (including the last, "Dogville", with Nicole Kidman). He is going to lead a two-day workshop in Copenhagen in October on applying scriptwriting to personas for HCI.

Lene Nielsen of Copenhagen Business School's Department of Informatics, who spoke at DIS 2002 about the need for better use of personas and scenarios, is behind the initiative.

At the time she saw a number of problems with how Alan Cooper's idea of personas was being implemented:
• Focus on use rather than on the user,
• Character-descriptions presenting stereotypes rather than believable characters, and
• Difficulties in creating an understanding of the user.

She announced the idea of the workshop on UN last year (see UN story: Workshop to spring from DIS2002 Critique of Scenario Use) and has now called for participation (see Sigchi.dk Workshop on Personas.

The workshop is intended for people who have worked with personas before and want to develop the technique. The workshop will focus on how to construct convincing and captivating portraits of users after the initial collection of user data.

Nielsen says 'I have always found the personas I have read as vague - and not vivid - descriptions. I have now hired the best Danish scriptwriter to give a workshop. He is to talk about what it takes to write a good character for film. And in the workshop we will try it out.'

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