Exercise 3 - Main persona

Marie

Name: Marie Andersson

Age: 39

Hometown: Upplands-Väsby, Sweden

Background
Marie is a 39 year old high school teacher of history and social studies. She is originally from Västerås, but at the age of 19 she moved to Stockholm to study at Stockholms University. In her last year she met Niklas, a law student at the same school. After a few years together they got married and decided to move to the suburb, Upplands Väsby. There they are raising their two kids, Erik and Linnea, 9 years old and 7 years old. In their vacations they usually go to their cabin in Dalarna.

Personality
Marie is outgoing, helpful and involved in her family and friends. She is usually very calm, but has a busy schedule and is therefore not always patient. She is very tidy, which she demands from her children to be as well. Her childrens’ well being and education is very important to her, and she likes to activate them, for example with museums and sports.

Today

Marie has been working at the same school for many years and is happy with that. She recently became a Friskis & Svettis leader. Todays she is tired from a long week at work preparing exams.

Scenario 1

Marie and Niklas had been planning their Tom Tits visit for a couple of days. They both knew they wanted to go there after seeing an ad in the local news paper. Marie had been there once before when she was young, but for the rest of the family this was the first time visiting the museum. Therefore, she is slightly more excited so she visited the webpage in advance. When visiting the web page she saw there would be a soap bubble show, that she thought especially Linnea would appreciate. They also found information regarding prices and opening hours there. She is hoping that this museum visit will take her thoughts off all the stress she has been experiencing at work the last couple of weeks.

When they arrived at Tom Tits she saw signs about the new “Tom Tits Exp” app but she didn’t have an internet connection and the museum didn’t have Wi-Fi. Niklas downloaded it on his phone and she decided to have a look with him. She borrowed his phone and oriented around quickly on the app to get an idea of what it was about. She saw general information, maps and experiment explanations and thought this could come in handy during her visit. Then she focused her attention on her family. Her children was eager to start experimenting and Marie and Niklas were just as excited and did a lot of experiments together with the children. They noticed that there wasn’t a lot of staff, which made it impossible to do one of the experiments. Marie found it sometimes hard to explain to her kids. She realized she needed the app to get the most out of the visit and borrowed Niklas phone frequently. She noticed that she was almost alone using it at Tom Tits though.

At lunchtime they stopped by the cafeteria, which was quite expensive, but they just got their pay check so it was all right. They appreciated the food being ecologic and organic, and explained why that was beneficial to their children.

They ended the museum visit by taking the slide down. Erik nagged about doing it another time but they had to go back to the car since they hadn’t paid a ticket for a longer stay.

After the visit, both Marie and Niklas recommended the museum to colleagues at work and said it was a good place to take the family.

Scenario 2:

Holiday season starts and Marie and her family are planning to go hiking at Tyresta National Park for the weekend. Just when they are about to leave, it starts to rain. Thus they decide to go to TomTits, since a colleague had recommended it to Marie. Her husband is disappointed, because he was looking forward to being outside in the nature. But since they didn’t come up with any other idea they decide to go. This was an impulsive decision so they didn’t have time to look up the museum before the visit.

When they arrive Marie sees all the kids running around and with slightly panic in her eyes she asks at the desk for some information pamphlet but they are just offering a simple map. The staff refers to the app or proposes buying the book. But Marie's internet volume is already consumed for this month and she is not willing to pay for a book in addition to the entrance fee.

She accompanies her children to the experiments. After a while they reach a complicated water experiment which fascinates her children. It is a construction, where half of the injector are pointing from inside to outside and the others reversed. Marie don’t know nor the explanation on her own neither how to explain this phenomenon. The experiment is missing an information sign. She asks a stranger who is using the app about the description to the experiment and gets disappointed as she realizes that the brief explanation not satisfies her own need for explanation. Therefore she finds herself not able to explain it to her kids.

When she goes back to her kids, they have already vanished. She finds them running around on another floor. Everything attracts their attention, but only for split seconds. She experiences troubles to motivate her kids to observe intended phenomenon.

On her way out she passes a  TV screen which advertises a bubble show. She just wants to motivate her children to watch it as she is realizing it has already taken place. So Marie and her family decides to leave the museum and go back home.