Our primary Persona Jenny was a university student and an existing instant messaging user. Jen was chosen because she was a typical Radio 1 user, which was the radio station whose website Connector would first be launched from.
All personas had fears about weirdos using chat rooms that were usually based in prior experience of anonymous chat. When asked, interviewees expressed that they could handle themselves, but had fears for the safety of their younger loved ones. We felt this highlighted a need to give users a panic button of some kind and this is actuated through the 'Alert a Moderator' feature. There are also many instances where users are educated about online safety through both targeted and ambient messages.
Because Jen was had a fairly basic level of understanding about computers, one of the biggest challenges we faced was making clear the concept that the other users she saw were also looking at the same web page. We achieved this through tying the colour scheme of the chat application to the parent web page, as well as using explanitory text. Although in testing users did not immediately grasp this, through experimentation they understood. The interface is designed to be very engaging and fun, which encourages users to play with it. The result is the rapid learning rate comparible to computer gameplay.
Animating, changeable avatars and written states of mind give Jen a sense that she can be larger than she is, or try on different representations of self and expressions of mood. This fulfills her need for experimentation and helps to build her self-esteem. Having control over the contact and conversations she maintains is promoted with features to block users and report offensive behaviour.
Early user interviews revealed some very interesting results about mediated communication. We asked participants to imagine being in a crowded dark room, where they could not see people's faces. We then asked them what information about a stranger would trigger a conversation with that person. Overwhelmingly, users wanted to see something funny and personal about the stranger. When asked about what information about they would provide about themself, they wanted some kind of 'in joke' that would identify them to their friends. We used this to determine a method for adding words to each user's identity in categories of 'I like', I hate' and 'I am'. These were then populated with whatever variables were appropriate for the primary audience of the website (in this case, Radio 1)