Hello, my name is Kristin, I am Syracuse University student and I could use some help with my homework. I am currently taking an information architecture class and I need to build a user persona for a website I am creating for my client Eric. The premise of the website is to allow easy access to dream recording software as well as the ability to make lucid dream practice an automated process. What I need for you guys is for you to answer some questions so that I can put together a user profile for Eric’s site.
Name(optional):
Gender:
Age:
Occupation:
How often do you use the internet?
What is your level of experience with technology?
What are some of your favorite websites? Why?
How often do you use the internet?
What kind of devices do you use to access the internet? Which device do you use most often?
Based off of the site description above what kinds of information and features are you going to be looking for in this site?
What kinds of information and features do you want and need?
How do you expect to have that content and functionality presented?
What do you value in other dreaming sites?
How often can you recall your dreams?
Have you ever practiced lucid dreaming? If so how often?
At what age did you have your first dream?
Have you ever kept a dream journal? If so at what age did you start? Does it help you recall your dreams more? And if you have stopped, why did you stop?
I’ll give this a go, but since I’ve tried various different methods of keeping a dream journal, my expectations might be a bit high for what should be on the site and/or in the software. 
You won’t get a full name from me, but “Mike” is fine if you don’t care to refer back to screen names. I’m 23 and male, as my profile shows, and I teach standardized test prep classes.
Very often; if I’m not at work or running errands, I’m on the Internet.
This is a bit of a vague question, but I’ll say what seems right. You won’t catch me tearing electronics apart to tinker with their innards, but I understand how data and signals pass from one thing to another as well as how to fix and maintain computers. I worked selling electronics before my current occupation, so I picked up this information to make a living.
LD4all, of course, for its reasonably-sized community and its amount of information on a topic I love. Beyond that, I use the Internet to be informed and entertained, so YouTube, Wikipedia, and the Cheezburger network of sites are others that I frequent.
Wait, you already asked this!
I almost always have my Windows 8 laptop hooked up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so I may as well be using a desktop to access the Internet. That said, I will use my laptop while out and about, and it converts into a tablet that I’ve used as well as my dedicated tablet and smartphone.
My first instinct would be to see what about the site makes “lucid dream practice an automated process,” but I’d also be curious as to its approach towards lucid dreaming — I’d imagine the site wouldn’t exist without some background information, and every site has a unique approach with no single approach being an agreed-upon best.
I imagine that the site will allow for interaction between its users somehow, else Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and other such software already offer an enormous wealth of functionality, especially if the user creates a template that appears with each new page so that fields needn’t be recreated. For a website based on “dream recording software”, I’d expect no less than the features in things already available to me in other non-physical dream journals. In particular, I’ve used both this forum and OneNote, and they offer:* Easy formatting: I can use BBcode here and Microsoft Office’s formatting tools in OneNote. The BBcode here even has some shortcuts, with specific ways to mark different types of dream phenomena.
- A way to share: The forum is self-explanatory here. OneNote offers me the ability to save to the cloud and make the journal publicly viewable, although I’d have to get an audience there.
- A way to comment: Again, the forum is self-explanatory. OneNote also lets me give other people a link to add their own comments to my entries.
In addition to the above, OneNote lets me:* Rapidly move between journal entries: instead of following links around, I can click buttons within my own sorting algorithm (e.g., dates) to get to pages in a flash. - Make and find tags: Similar to DreamViews’ dream journal system or to a blog, I can create a tag for anything I choose and apply it to any journal entry. I can then go find the tag later, e.g., I can sort entries by date, but then search them later using their tags if I want to find every lucid dream, or every dream in which I fly, or every dream about work, etc.
The features above are pretty typical of any forum or note-taking program, and almost all necessary for my attention. Otherwise, I can continue using what I use currently.
Presenting it like a blog or like any site that allows commenting would be great. I should be able to click on an entry, see the entry first, then any outside comments on it below. It would also be nice if I could navigate quickly without constantly clicking the back button or following sequences of links: a layout with a thin frame on the side handling the navigation of the main sorting or the results of a tag search and a main frame showing the journal entries would be optimal. DreamViews’ journal section shows the main frame well, but does not offer a separate navigation frame and requires liberal use of links to different pages and of a web browser’s back button. As much as I love LD4all, its use of a subforum for journals instead of a blog-like interface makes sorting journal entries difficult.
I value interaction within users and access to a wealth of anecdotes on both lucid dream induction and on the lucid dreams themselves (e.g., public dream journals).
While I have dry spells with no recall, I can typically recall dreams daily, often two or three.
Yes. I often practiced for months at a time before being distracted by other things, but I’ve come to make it a constant practice.
I had my first lucid dream at age 17, about seven months after I first learned what lucid dreaming was.
I do keep a dream journal. I started at age 16, but as previously stated, I frequently got distracted and stopped using my journal for lengths of time. I have resumed, however. It very much helps me remember my dreams.
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I hope this information helps; best of luck to you!