The Hindu Business Line : Avatars as business tools

Network Appliance (NetApp) is a $2.8-billion storage networking firm up against the likes of EMC Corporation and Hewlett-Packard. Maintaining the culture of innovation amongst its engineers so products are creative and useful is a prime focus to reach up the market share ladder.

One way of developing better products is by tuning into clients’ data management woes, understanding requirements, and shaping products to reflect needs. However, the knowledge that after-sales and marketing folks get from the field does not always permeate to the engineers/developers.

And that is why the company created Mike Raja and Joe and four other personas. Joe could be a DBA (database administrator)/Chief Information Officer/any other user of NetApp’s data management products.

“This is a new approach that we are trying. Innovation is important and these personas for users of our products help continually innovate,” Louis H. Selincourt, Vice-President, SMAI & Offshore Operations, told eWorld over lunch at the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, recently.

The idea came from the book, “The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum” penned by Alan Cooper, whose company makes software more user-friendly.

“Personas create a consistent ID of our users, so we can discuss them across the company while brainstorming,” says Selincourt.

While discussing how to improve the user interface of a product, or personalise it for a particular vertical, employees can now ask each other, “What would Joe/Mike Raja do in this situation?”

Personas have led to replacing of the command line interface for the products (which required programming skills) to a ‘drag-n-drop’ one, so even a user who does not understand the nuances of the products can use it, he says.

By discussing personas and their behaviour, the product development team can even design a user interface for a non-computer user or a non-English user.

Selincourt laughs, “We also found ourselves looking at customers and deciding which persona he resembles. We mould personas to not only behave but also look like a customer — a kind of fine-tuning to suit a real person.”

Besides personas, NetApp uses Wiki sites for project members to collaborate between centres. Video conferencing, instant messaging and e-mail helps the globalised workforce keep in touch and stay focussed on clients.

preethij@thehindu.co.in