After completing the readings for this module and thinking more about my project, I realized that I needed to revise my personas slightly. Below are my now-revised personas.

Persona 1: Primary Target Audience

Name: Anthony Sutherland

Demographic:

• Age: 35
• Gender: Male
• From: Sacramento, California
• Education: BA and MA in Economics
• Job: Financial analyst
• Income: $75,000

Descriptive Title: The Cautious Visitor

Quote: “I like to do my research before visiting a site”

A Day in a Life:

Anthony is a financial analyst for a company in Sacramento, California. Most of his time is spent working with little time left for himself. With this, he is picky about what he chooses to do with the small amount of free time he has for himself each week. Usually, when he has the choice, he chooses to spend that time outdoors, especially at national parks.  He says California, and the neighboring states, gives him plenty of opportunities to spend his time outdoors and national parks. However, before deciding what to do, he conducts research online. He wants to ensure he can get the most out of a place before he throws away his extra time. He also likes to learn more about other parks he can’t visit based on his work schedule. He likes websites that can give him information contained at the site without him visiting.

End Goal: Anthony wants a website that can give him historical or scientific information so he can either decide whether or not to visit or learn more about a site he can’t visit in person.

Persona 2: Secondary Target Audience

Name: Layla West

Demographic:

• Age: 42
• Gender: Female
• From: New Orleans, Louisiana
• Education: BA and MA in History, MA in Museum Studies
• Job: Educator at the World War II Museum in New Orleans
• Income: $55,000

Descriptive Title: The Lifelong World War II Historian

Quote: “World War II is one of the most fascinating moments in history. I’m always looking to learn more about it.”

A Day in the Life:

Layla is an educator at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her job consists of helping create exhibits, lesson plans, and programs at the museum. These responsibilities require her to know about the history of the topic or topics she and her team are focused on. While she does use physical forms of scholarship, she mostly turns to digital forms to conduct her research. She especially takes advantage of websites that use different media forms to tell a topic’s history. She feels that physical forms of scholarship that lack these different forms are not as engaging as these digital sources. She thinks that websites from the National Park Service and the Library of Congress provide the most valuable sources for research. However, she finds it takes a lot of time to gather the sources from the different websites. She likes to take advantage of websites that contain many sources and material she needs for her research all in one place.

End Goal: Layla would like a website that contains much of the material on a topic’s history.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. Many lives were lost that day as the Japanese destroyed American military planes and ships. The day after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan and enter World War II. That moment served as one of the turning points of the war. In 1962, the government built a memorial to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor. Named after one of the ships destroyed during the attack, the USS Arizona Memorial is visited by many people each year wanting to learn more and pay respects. When people visit memorials, they think about the event and their feelings. Their thoughts then add to the ever-growing remembrance and scholarship of the memorialized event. The digital public history project will focus on this remembrance and thoughts about a historical event commemorated by the USS Arizona Memorial. The project hopes to answer how people who visit the USS Arizona Memorial feel and think about the event, what happened afterward, and how that affects and changes how they remember it. With this in mind, the project will include sources and items from different points of view. It will include commentary from visitors on their thoughts and a way for them to contribute to the project. There will also be historical background sources for people who have not visited the memorial, giving them the opportunity and accessibility to contribute to the project.

            The presentation of the project will be through an Omeka website with the contribution plugin installed to allow users to share their thoughts on the memorial and the event. Other plugins include CSV Import, Docs Viewer, Embed Codes, Exhibit Builder, and Simple Pages. The website will also have different forms of media to increase accessibility, including documents, photos, audio recordings, and videos. These items will provide information about the memorial and remembrance, including historical background about the event and World War II. For example, one of the items is a video of Japanese Americans sharing their experience after the attack and during the war, providing both background on remembrance and history. Another source showcases a transcript of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech, providing historical background and serving as a way for people to garner their own ideas and thoughts about the event and memorial. Those contributions will be added to scholarship about the event and the memorial as people contribute.

            The project will focus on two groups, one primary and the other secondary. The primary audience is those contributing to the project with their thoughts on the attack, the events afterward, and the memorial. The project’s main purpose is to discover how memorials serve as a way for people to remember an event in history and how people remember both the main event and the events that happened afterward. The material provided also helps those who have not visited the memorial learn and think about the memorial and the events. The hope is that they, too, can provide their own understanding of the history and the memorial even though they cannot visit the historical site or have not. The secondary audience is historians or those interested in the event’s history or the war. The website also provides historical background while including sources that focus on the memorial and remembrance. The project will also include scholarship sources for further research. Historians can use the project as a research tool, and those interested in the history can use it to learn more about the events. While the project’s primary purpose is for people to contribute, it will also provide historical background for other users interested in the event and memorial.

Researching how different companies use personas to gauge who may or may not be their audience made me think differently about the website I am creating and who might be a user. According to Shlomo Goltz, in his article “A Closer Look at Personas: What They Are and How They Work,” states, “A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way . . . Each persona represents a significant portion of people in the real world and enables the designer to focus on a manageable and memorable cast of characters, instead of focusing on thousands of individuals.” (Goltz, “A Closer Look at Personas). According to Goltz, personas are a way for someone to narrow down and focus on the different traits of people rather than a generalized public. Before looking at personas, while I thought I was narrowing my primary and secondary audiences down to more descriptive characteristics, I was not looking at the bigger picture. For example, for my project, I stated that my primary audience includes everyday American tourists of national parks or memorials with at least a high school education. However, that was not as narrow as I thought. After reading about personas, I did not consider why people visit these places, what they might have been interested in school, or their degrees. I also did not consider the people who necessarily do not visit these places. According to the WOSP Personas, some people visit, occasionally visit, or do not visit at all. Different audiences should be considered when designing a project to incorporate ways that might make them users. (WOSP Personas).

The Pew Research Center’s research on internet, mobile, and social media use has also made me reconsider who and what my focus is on. According to the Center, mobile use plays a big part in peoples’ everyday lives. The Center states, “Mobile devices have changed the way people think about how and when they can communicate and gather information by making just-in-time and real-time encounters possible. They have also affected the way people allocate their time and attention.” (Pew Research Center, “Three Technology Revolutions”). The last line made me think about how I need to design my project to make it a website for people who want to “allocate their time and attention.” According to the Pew Research Center, social media use has risen in the past years, stating, “The rise of social media and social networking has affected the way that people think about their friends, acquaintances, and even strangers . . . One of the major impacts was that the traditional boundaries between private and public, between home and work, between being a consumer of information and producer of it were blurred.” (Pew Research Center, “Three Technology Revolutions). Again, the last part struck me. For my project, I plan on making the website collaborative. With this new information from the Center, I see that social media can be used for people to be a “producer” of information for the project.

Hi, my name is Audrey Schroeder, and I am a graduate student working towards a Master’s in history. This is my second semester in the program at George Mason. Before this program, I received my Bachelor’s in history at the University of Mary Washington. I tend to focus on popular culture and World War II in American history. Before I chose history as my major, I was initially working towards teaching in Early Childhood Education. My background in digital humanities at the moment is limited. My research, in general, takes advantage of digital sources. For example, my senior thesis at Mary Washington was on Hollywood movies used as propaganda during World War II, which required me to find and watch said movies. I also made use of individuals involved during that time. I also had an assignment in one of my classes requiring me to record the metadata for a document in an archive for the school. So far, at George Mason, I took Intro to Digital Humanities last semester, which I enjoyed. I decided to include the certificate along with my major because my ultimate goal is to work in a museum setting one day. Since digital exhibits are becoming more of the norm, learning how to create them would be beneficial. My goal for this semester is to learn how to create accessible digital exhibits for the public.