User Profile
Name
Bob O'Flaurghty
Age
29 years old
Location
Brooklyn, New York
Occupation
Graphic DesignerThe Scenario:¹ As Bob goes through an average day he wants to get information on certain news items and topics.

When Bob wakes up in the morning he makes his coffee and sits down in front of his computer, he opens up Google News to see what the latest headlines are. Since Google News is a computer-generated news site,² he knows he will not experience any bias from any particular publisher as far as what stories are most important. The hierarchy of the page allows all of the stories equal importance (unlike the newspaper), so he can browse until he finds a story that seems interesting.

He selects an article entitled "Busy Day at Court Handling Sect's Children," he looks at the links to sources where he could read the same story and decides that his best bet is The New York Times. He clicks the link. Once on The New York Times website he begins reading. About half way through the article talks about the "Yearning for Zion ranch," Bob has never heard of this before so he clicks the link to learn more about this ranch. There he is able to see an image of the ranch along with several other stories about the ranch, he is satisfied now that he can put an image with a name and clicks the browsers back button to return him to the browser to finish reading the article.

As a designer Bob has found that most mainstream news media outlets seldom cover the news inside the design world, this is not a problem though. Bob opens up his personalized Netvibes³ where he has subscribed to RSS feeds⁴ with news relevant to design. On one of his favorite sites called Motionographer Bob sees that The Mill has produced a new Audi ad, instead of waiting to see the commercial on television, Bob clicks the link and is able to see the ad within seconds online.

Bob loves the spot but sees that the link provided isn't on The Mill's website but on Beam.tv, he has never heard of Beam.tv so he clicks back to Motionographer and asks what Beam.tv is. He is satisfied for the time being and he goes to get ready for work. Before Bob leaves the house he sees that the skies are a little grey, he decideds to play it safe and check the weather before he leaves. While he's doing this he plugs his iPod in to sync with iTunes, then looks at the weather widget which shows an image of a rain cloud. By now his iPod sync is done, he shuts down his computer, grabs his umbrella and iPod and walks to his subway stop.

While on the subway Bob listens to his iPod, this day Bob sees that a new NPR Technology podcast⁵ episode has downloaded overnight and been placed on his iPod. He listens to catch up on the latest technology news on his way into work. At work Bob goes to the Motionographer website to see if anyone has responded to his question yet, and in fact someone has. They tell Bob that Beam.tv is a new web application which is a subsidiary of The Mill. Satisfied, he finally has an answer Bob goes about his work day.

About an hour before he leaves the office for the day to go home he gets an email from NYC's MTA telling him that his usual train (the Brooklyn bound R train) is skipping the 14 St - Union Sq stop advising him to take the N, Q, or W train to Canal St and transfer there. When Bob gets home he turns on NBC Nightly News as background noise while he cooks himself dinner.