Age: 22

Abby just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Ohio State University, GO BUCKEYES! She does not know what she wants to do in the future but in the mean time travels from city to city to visit friends, party and work random jobs for money. Abby’s dream job is to have her own TV show based upon her adventures called J.A.G- Just a Girl.  For her travels, Abby carries with her a bag of clothes, a Mac Book, a camera phone and an iPod. Abby currently is in New York City staying with her best friend Malena and is working as a guest bartender twice a week at Bar None and promoting events or working catering jobs once a week, making about $400/week. She plans to leave NY in a couple days and make her way to Boston where she got a gig through her friend Steve to work as a stage assistant for the Justin Timberlake concert. From there she will make her way down to Miami for her friend Doug’s big birthday bash.

Abby is constantly searching online looking for jobs in the cities that she intends to visit. She has many friends that are big promoters and will always notify her of major events. Abby is very social and loves meeting new people. She actively uses MySpace for self-promotion, potential employment, keeping in touch with friends and family and for social networking.  She has past experience working as a hostess, food runner, bar runner, server, bartender…the list goes on. For job searches she uses Google, Craiglist and goes through her extremely large network of friends on MySpace.

The major issue Abby encounters while job searching is timeliness, she usually needs a response from the employer regarding a job about a week in advance given that she is not in the area but only needs about a 24 hour notice if she is in the area. Another problem she has is lack of internet connection. Since she is constantly on the road it is often hard for her to check her email to see if she received a response from an employer.

Goals:

• Have fun, enjoy life and work random jobs to pay for her travel.
• Find work easily from place to place by maintaining and expanding her contacts.
• Update information about current availability quickly and easily

Justification:

Abigail is an important persona to this project because she represents the prototypical temporary worker who has no full-time job but relies on short-term ad hoc positions to make just enough income to get by. Abigail demonstrates the need of finding temporary work that is location specific. She requires timely notification from potential employers about open positions and relies heavily on social networking and word of mouth to find opportunities. Abigail’s persona will help the team develop a user-interface that will capture the absolute needs of a temporary service professional to ensure people like Abigail will use the system. This may include backpackers from abroad who come to the States looking to travel and work. Abigail will need to use our system several times a week to browse different postings. The interface will have to allow her to search for jobs easily based on location and time constraints. Abigail would most definitely benefit from having a large social network of friends that would refer her to employers. It is important that the system can notify Abigail about jobs even when she does not have internet connection. Abigail’s time sensitivity, need for location-based search, and real time notification from employers makes her an important persona and perhaps our primary persona.

Age: 27

Jeff is currently a full time anthropology student at UC Berkeley in his first year back at school. After he graduated from college, he worked for the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. For his PHD he is focusing on coastal archaeology. He feels that the contacts that he is making in school will serve him well in his future career, and never misses a social event. Also, he is a passionate biker and spends much of his free time cycling in the hills.
 
Jeff would like to pick up a little extra cash when it is convenient, but it is not a priority for him. He has done a few odd jobs in the service industry, working as a server, bar back, and occasionally as a runner for an acquaintance’s catering company. He is a very good worker, always prompt, responsible, and willing to “fill in the gaps”, but has declined offers of permanent positions,  “because you never know when something great might be going on a Tuesday night.” He doesn’t mind going wherever the job may be, relying on public transit and his trusty bike to get him just about anyplace in the city.

While Jeff likes not being committed to a regular job, he does not work often enough to take advantage of the word-of-mouth connections among other part-time workers. For that reason, he finds work primarily through Craigslist, generally a couple of days in advance, but sometimes only a day or a few hours. He would love to find an employer who will value his work ethic, so that he doesn’t have to prove himself over and over again, but will understand that he has other commitments that come first.

Jeff considers himself a pretty computer-savvy guy, having made heavy use of databases at his museum job. He is online about 10 hours a day, between classes and schoolwork.

Goals:

• Make extra “pocket money”
• Find work that does not interfere with school or social activities/hobbies
• Capitalize on his good reputation among employers

Justification:

Jeff’s persona typifies the user for whom extra money is a luxury, not a necessity. He is an infrequent user and will not spend the time to learn to navigate a complex interface, probably only taking advantage of the most immediately obvious features. Reputation is important to him, as is timing.

Age: 44

Catherine is the owner and manager of a small food catering business located in Berkeley, CA that is usually called upon to provide its services for events organized by nearby hotels, companies, and the University of California at Berkeley. She employs a group of 10 people full time: 4 assistants and 6 staff. In addition to the core staff, Catherine also employs about 25 UC Berkeley college students part time.

Catherine is very concerned with the efficient managing of the part time employees since the turnover rate is quite high. Currently she has set up a system where the students will sign up for different shifts on a sign-up sheet located in the office. In the event of no-shows or sickness, Catherine has to frantically make phone calls to other students or temp agencies in order to fill in for those who will not be able to make it. Sometimes, however, the core staff is forced to work overtime to compensate for missing people. Matters are worsened during exam periods, as most students are unavailable at those times.

Catherine is not overly strict in the hiring process for temporary working. She tends to looks respectful individuals with people skills and a willingness to serve. Certain missing attributes can be compensated for others and individuals can be moved around depending on their skills (for example, kitchen vs. serving). Catherine does prefer to have some sort of positive reference (from word-of-mouth or staff recommendation) for potential employees but in certain cases, is forced to take whatever she finds.

Catherine considers herself as an “intermediate” computer user. She is able to use email, create/edit documents, and navigate the web. She has no “coding” abilities. In addition, with the exception of references to a certain “My Space” made by Sheryl, her 15yr old daughter and occasional visits to “Craigslist” to search for potential employees, she does not actively participate in the online social networking movement. In addition, most of her office work is done without much use of the computer. However, she is a fast learner, and will usually welcome any novel means that will make her job easier or more efficient.

Goals:

• Make sure all catering events run smoothly
• Find extra helping hands if necessary without much hassle or stress
• Manage staff effectively 

Justification:

Catherine is essential to our design process since her biggest concern revolves around the management of her temporary staff. She would like an easy and efficient way to perform tasks such as finding new potential employees and finding replacements for last minute cancellations. She is also not an advanced computer user and will, thus, need a program that is easy to understand and use making the user interface design critical to her adoption of our solution.  

Age: 38

Anna is a Restaurant Manager at Indigo restaurant which features California-Mediterranean cuisine. She handles all administrative work including payroll, schedule and staffing inventory. She started out as a waitress at Indigo and after years of hard work eventually got promoted to the position of Restaurant Manager. When she is not busy managing the restaurant Anna likes to attend live jazz concerts and watch romantic-comedies. She graduated from California State University where she majored in broadcasting. Anna is currently working to get experience in the service industry and eventually wants to open up her own bar/lounge that serves food and offers trendy lounge jazz.

Anna has around 25 to 30 people working under her at the restaurant, each of who do 2 to 3 shifts a week. The restaurant hires approximately 10 people per year and the turnover rate is one person a month. She doesn’t worry too much about being able to find people since people drop off their resumes all the time. Word of mouth and walk-ins are common means that potential employees use to search for jobs. If the restaurant needs someone and Anna doesn’t have a backlog of resumes, she will post advertisements. Anna believes newspapers are no longer the most effective way to communicate job openings and mostly posts job advertisements on Craigslist.

Flexibility, a positive attitude, past experience and skills are the major criteria Anna uses to evaluate employees. Anna has had some bad experiences with employees lying on the resume, having a bad attitude and being unreliable and believes strongly in references. Although high educational qualifications are a good thing, it is not a major selection criterion since past experience and a positive attitude matter more to her. Anna thinks it is important to train her employees thoroughly, especially about menus, alcohol selection and standards. She believes in giving her employees a relatively stable schedule, and assigns servers shifts according to their strengths and weaknesses.

Anna has experienced situations where she needed servers at the last minute due to people backing out. In such a situation she calls everyone and anyone she knows and if nothing works out she takes the shift herself. An online resource where she can find potential employees would definitely be useful. In particular such a resource would be very valuable when restaurants do seasonal hires which are quite common in the restaurant industry. Anna is computer savvy, checks her email often and would be comfortable using such an online resource.

Goals:

• Ensure good communication with her staff- Wants to be friends and yet maintain an authoritative figure
• Wants to find a good match to replace an employee who backs out at the last minute
• Would like a system where she could find trustworthy and reliable employees in an easy and efficient manner

Justifications:

Anna is one of our personas that would benefit from the system. Although restaurants typically do not hire on a temporary basis, Restaurant Managers like Anna would definitely use such a resource in situations of last minute emergencies which characterizes the restaurant industry. Also since the system will provide a scheduling tool, Anna can use this system to manage temporary employees as well as their core staff and identify open shifts immediately. Anna cares a lot about finding reliable and flexible employees and is likely to use such a resource.