Persona - Simon Sims (Spoilt Baby)

According to BBC, babies aged between 2 and 3 years old start to say words, babies aged between 3 and 4 years old start to ask questions and babies aged between 4 and 5 years old start to form sentences.

(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ – 7/2/2007)

We have decided that our target users will be babies aged between 1 and 3 years old. We are combining the ideas that we have brainstormed in our last meeting which is the baby button communicator, baby voice recognition and digital flash card.

We have defined 5 personas that would help us to identify our target users. These are our predictions of how our target users would react to our technology design. It may not be specific ones but we tried to match these profiles and implement them into our design.

Simon Sims - Spoilt Baby

• 1 year old boy
• Has difficulties drinking milk - tends to spill it
• Has problems sleeping
• Only child
• Attention seeker
• Very shy
• Cries a lot for attention, and whenever he sees strangers
• Likes to play toys on his own
• Does not interact with other children

Summary

Simon comes from a wealthy family. His father, aged 35 years old is a CEO of his own company. As he is the only child, he became the centre of attention of his relatives. He received a large number of presents from his relatives last Christmas. He does not understand how to play with half of them especially toys with advanced features. Since his father is very busy with his business, Simon spends most of his time with his nanny. His nanny is in her mid-20s and loves technology. She tries her best to involve Simon into using the toys. He has very little interest in technology and therefore does not adapt well to it. His mother is in her late 20s and is a businesswoman who spends most of her time working. Due to her workload, she spends very limited time with Simon.

A Day in the Life

When Simon wakes up in the morning, he starts to cry to get attention. His nanny prepares milk for him to drink. He is very clumsy and manages to spill his drink even though it is in a bottle. During the day, he loves to crawl and sometimes walks small distances between furniture. He likes to play with his toys but sometimes gets hurt by falling on them. On occasion, when his parents’ friends bring their children over to visit, he becomes jealous and cries. He does not like other children playing with his toys and has difficulties in joining them. He is very shy when approached by strangers which makes him cry for attention from his nanny. He usually goes to bed around 9 pm when he needs to drink milk before he sleeps. His nanny sings lullabies to help him get to sleep but he still wakes up every two hours and cry for attention.

Goals and Fears

His main goal is to have as many toys as possible. He pays less attention to complicated toys with unattractive colour and texture design. When his nanny tries to get him to interact with technological toys, Simon refuses to play with them on his own but when his nanny participates, he takes slightly more interest in it. This indicates that Simon either fears to play with new toys or is not willing to learn new skills. When playing on his own, he gets scared and starts crying especially when his nanny is not around. He does not like being alone and gets cranky when he is hungry.

Skills, Knowledge and Abilities

As mentioned above, Simon does not like computers or any other technological devices around him. He treats a television or a computer as a toy. He takes less pride to know new products, as it requires knowledge and skills. His ability to adapt new skills is almost zero to none. For example, when his nanny tries to teach him to play with toys that require some skills, he ignores her and takes a longer time to explore the toy. Even though his parents gave him a new toy to play with, he sticks himself to the normal toys he used to play with, as he knows how to play with those. Sometimes, he tries to eat any small toy that is given to him assuming that it is edible. He also likes to crawl onto large devices and jump on it.

Communicating

Most of the time, Simon communicates with his nanny and seeks her attention by crying. He seeks attention from his parents by crying too. He only tries to communicate with his nanny or parent when he is hungry, sleepy or to get personal attention. He seldom communicates with strangers or any other children as well relatives. This limits his communication with the outside world and certainly the adaptability to learn. He is able to speak some simple words such as "Papa", "Mama", "milk", "Nana" and "sleep".

Some of the personas description were taken from real observation. We watched a few videos on what a one year old baby usually does in his or her daily life. These personas will help us to design our product and ensure that they can be used by babies with different characteristics.

Note: Thanks to Richard for drawing all the persona pictures! These pictures are original and we did not copy or get it from any other resources. If you like to save those pictures for other purposes, please let us know!