Using personas in intranet projects
I don't think this is a terribly new idea, but one that has been used under the guise of “Typical user”, etc. Regardless, the philosophy behind personas is powerful and important: “Design with your users in mind.” Of course you might have several different personas to manage. A browser, an existing customer, a potential customer, etc. The key here is that you keep these users and their needs in mind and focus.
Using personas in intranet projects: “Just occasionally I have a 'Eureka' moment. At the end of last year, and quite serendipitously, I came across the concept of personas in an excellent paper by Alison Head in Online magazine. Since then I have been using the approach in intranet projects with a high degree of success. So what is a persona? It is a real virtual user! The person described in the persona does not actually exist but is created through research to typify some of the characteristics of a group of users. Biographical details are developed, even down to a photograph, so that the person concerned is so real that the intranet team start to identify with them as individual members of staff of the organization. One of the best summaries on persona development appears on James Robertson's Step Two site, authored by Tina Calabria.”