For this milestone, we used the information gathered during interviews as well as the results of our affinity diagram to create fictional personas that help us understand different types of user groups.  We began by examining our interviewees and measuring them on a number of behavioral variables as described in Cooper, 2003.  These behavioral variables included character traits such as whether they are proactive in seeking help, their feelings toward using technology, and whether or not they enjoy networking to learn about academic and career opportunities.  Identifying these key characteristics was important in creating our personas.  While we aimed not to be stereotypical in our persona creation, we hope that they are representative of different user groups, while each having a believable personality.

Rick Crawford

Rick is a passionate 30-year-old, single American, who believes that people who have ambition have a history of accomplishments. Returning to campus last year, he is currently a 2nd-year MBA student at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

After receiving a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Stanford University, he worked as an IT consultant with Accenture in Boston for 4 years, consulting mainly for technology-based companies. At Ross, he maintains his technical focus while pursuing a new path in entrepreneurship. He plans to stay with Accenture after graduation to continue developing his contacts and consulting skills. In the long run, he aspires to start his own consulting business in China.

As a MBA student with a very tight schedule, Rick typically spends at minimum 10 to12 hours on schoolwork. "I take schoolwork seriously, definitely not the type of person who takes classes for fun." Sometimes at late night after project meetings or corporate information sessions, he would go to bars, alone or with friends, to cheer himself up.
Besides schoolwork, he actively participates in two professional clubs, Entrepreneur and Venture Club (EVC) and Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), where he manages to secure leadership positions and seeks the opportunity to network with fellow MBA students, corporate recruiters, and faculty.

He has been a huge fan of Jazz since he was little, but he seldom goes to jazz concerts after entering Ross. "I find it difficult to balance the demanding coursework and my personal interests due to lack of time." However, he still tries his best to attend Chinese classes on weekends which would prepare him for an oversea career switch in the future.
With a solid technical background, he is not only fluent at several programming languages but also proficient at audio-visual production. The first thing he does every morning after he wakes up is to check his emails and RSS reader and keep track of ongoing news about consulting industry and other business issues. Owning to time constraints, he mostly uses emails and facebook to maintain his relationships and communication with friends and colleagues.

At the beginning of every semester, Rick feels so sick of going back and forth between Wolverine, Ross School of Business website, and Ford School of Public Policy website where he searches for cognate courses. He wants a centralized system where he can find all the information he needs at one place. "It's busy enough that wasting time on looking for course information on separate websites is extra-annoying." "I know Ross offers whole bunch of online resources, but it's so easy to get lost there and the contents of the website are obviously not well-organized."

Rick is always thinking of his career path after Ross. "I have clear career goals in mind, I want to choose the courses that would really help me build up my skill set." "Ross should provide students with clear-defined routes, naming what course students should choose in order to land a specific position after graduation" 
Although Rick feels confused about selecting courses, he has never talked to any academic advisers. "I don't think academic advising would be of much help; it seems that their knowledge of the consulting business is rather limited." However, he does hope to receive an academic progress report periodically from advisors so that he can make sure he's on track without having to meet someone in person.

Carlita Minaya

Carlita Minaya is a first year MBA student. She received her Bachelor's degree in Business from the University of Iowa. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she worked for a while in the Finance department at General Mills, where she met her husband Morrie. They have two children, who are now 11 and 13 years old. When their first child was born, Carlita decided to stay at home to be more involved in raising them than a full time job would allow. When they reached school age, she drove them to school every day and encouraged them to participate in many activities including softball and dance lessons. Carlita has also encouraged her children to try musical instruments because she loved to play the clarinet when she was young.

During her free time beyond domestic and childcare responsibilities, Carlita developed several internet hobbies related to her Finance background including some profitable eBay interaction trading collectible dishes and other housewares. Since the kids are a little older now and the demands at home aren't as great, she's eager to get back into the working world and hopefully even start her own business. Having been a stay at home mom for over a decade now, she wants to renew her skills before working again. Her husband is an alum of the Ross MBA program and was a key influence in encouraging her to pursue her interests and go back to school and offering financial support.

She is a little nervous about being a returning student; as someone in her early 40's she's easily going to be the oldest in many of her classes. That is part of the reason she enjoys using the internet to stay informed. She also worries that people will judge her too easily as old and frail; since childhood she has walked with a cane because of an injury which caused partial paralysis in her right leg. Despite her concerns, her desire to start her own business keeps her focused upon her goal to succeed in graduate school. Using the internet skills she developed in her free time at home over the years, she researched schools and became familiar with websites such as the Ross School of Business. "My main source of information about classes is the internet. I don't have a lot of time outside of classes to spend networking, and I am comfortable finding out about classes online over talking to classmates, but sometimes I hear about courses I'm interested in from classmates, too." Carlita spends most of her time outside of classes with her family when she's not studying or working on projects with classmates.

She uses her familiarity with the website now when choosing classes, but she wishes they were better organized. "There are a lot of resources online for learning about the Ross School of Business and its classes, but they really seem to be all over the place. There is no consistency between the different department's websites, either." She has never used the advising program because she can tell what the requirements are for her program by looking at the catalog and the web. She can also tell how people feel about the courses to some extent via Impact. "Wolverine Access and Impact are sort of like portals for information. I find the course rating section on Impact especially useful. It's nice to know how other people feel about a course before you decide to spend your tuition money on it." She has also overcome the learning curve on the course bidding system. "It's nice that they provide bidding history information about the popular courses in the bidding system. It's an odd system, but it seems to work for those of us who know how it works." Carlita considers herself accomplished at navigating the internet to decide on classes and she is happy about the time she saves by knowing where to look because it leaves her more time for her family.

Michelle Jenkings

Michelle Jenkins graduated in '95 from the University of South Dakota with a degree in Social Work and Public Policy. After working in Washington D.C. as a Children's Rights lobbyist for nearly 3 years Michelle grew tired of politics and decided to move to Ann Arbor with her husband, Greg Jenkins, who was starting his new career as a nurse. She started work at the Ford School of Public Policy as an academic adviser for graduate students. There were some administrative cuts so she transferred over to the Ross Business School in '99 and has been advising there for the last eight years.

Michelle is now the mother of a 2 yr old, but despite being at home with her child as often as she can she uses her vast experience to advise students at the Ross School of Business. She was part of an exploratory committee to evaluate methods of reaching out to international students who typically don't utilize academic advising resources. "As an advisor I want students to know what's out there, and to utilize all the resources available to them." She's also the Business School contact for the Phi Beta Chi business fraternity.

Michelle wishes students would come more prepared to their advising sessions. "I spend a lot of time explaining things they should have known from orientation". She believes that there are many online resources that the business school provides to aid in their course selection, but most of the students she talks too either don't use them or don't know about them. "I do my best to get all the information out there, but I'm open to suggestions of effective new ways to do this."

Michelle use the Wolverine Access degree audit printout, in combination with a specially designed spreadsheet, to calculate degree requirements and whether or not a student can possibly graduate with distinction. "Course planning is a process that is unique to every individual and it's difficult for me to really get to know a student from just one or two advising sessions". She also admits the skewed advisor-student ratio - "There's a handful of us, but scores of  students. I think it'd be nice if there were a system where a student could get personalized information as if it were coming from an academic advisor that's known them for years."

Being the Phi Beta Chi contact here at the Ross School of Business, she really sees first hand how valuable social networking and information can be when a student is deciding on courses. Michelle also acknowledges that the bidding system is sometimes convoluted, and some students really don't understand it, but it seems to suit the business school's purposes well. "Again, that's the question of how we can reach out to the students more effectively."

Steve McMahon

Steve is a 26 year old American student who just moved to Ann Arbor from New York. He has an undergraduate degree in Business Management from the University of Arizona, though he transferred schools twice before he graduated. His mother is a doctor and his dad is the CEO of a financial management company. Steve has no siblings. Prior to coming to Michigan he was working at the New York branch of his father's company.

Steve is a first year MBA student at the Ross School of Business and he came here on recommendation from his dad – a Ross Alumni. After graduation, he wants to go to Europe and work for an international financial company.

Steve likes all kinds of outdoor activities and he does not spend much time at his desk – he would rather go to the gym to exercise or meet friends at a bar. He doesn't involve himself in professional clubs like several other b-school students, and on weekends he usually leaves town to visit friends in New York or Chicago.

He does not use computers very much - he prefers PCs as he finds MACs too hard too use. Once in a while he buys books at Amazon or Barnes and Noble where he makes use of the rating feature a lot. He usually checks his email every other day, most of the time using the library computers since he damaged his computer when he was playing football at home. He has subscribed to some Business magazines to read about successful careers of managers and get informed about possible job opportunities.

He missed orientation because he preferred to go on a sailing trip with friends in Florida, thinking that he could look up information online to decide on courses. "But it was too much trouble to browse through all these different resources. I'd rather have someone just explain it to me." He also takes advice on courses from his dad, who graduated from the Ross school thirty years ago.

Steve ended up in some classes that weren't what he expected them to be. "I just took 'em based on the short description. I should have had people tell me more about it - like whether the class was interesting or valuable to have in my skill set."

Steve has trouble keeping track of requirements too. " I tried to waive some classes that I took in my undergrad, but the process was too hard to understand – now I have to take the classes anyway." He doesn't want to take the initiative to meet with advisors. "I don't have specific questions to ask them, anyway. It'd be cool to just see what other students do - what courses they take and where they land up."

Steve just wants the MBA tag - "You're only going to learn stuff on your real job. I just want the classes that make employers want to hire me. I don't care what those classes are, just point me in the right direction!"

Raya Roux

Raya is a 28-year-old native of France and has lived in Paris all her life. With an educational background in Fine Arts, she enthusiastically started her working life doing visual layouts for a lifestyle website. When the website folded up, she decided to move on and took a culinary course and found herself working at a bistro. Six years later, Raya is a chef at La Madeleine, a five-star restaurant.

She's made a lot of contacts along the way - all those cocktail parties and elaborate dinners at La Madeleine enabled her to meet people in high places. That's how she received an offer to manage a new French restaurant at Chicago. And that's why she's looking at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Still working as one of La Madeleine's most popular chefs, Raya spends any free time she has - which isn't much - looking for information online about the Ross School. She's convinced of its reputation, but she wants to know whether they can offer her an MBA tailored to her career interest in restaurant management. "Doing an MBA is an expensive proposition – I need to make sure that Ross can offer me courses that would help me reach my career goals". The problem is she doesn't know what courses she needs to further her goal. Being so far away doesn't help either.

"I'm also not sure what courses exactly would benefit me, so I would like an easy way to discuss my career goals with Ross advisors before I join the school"

"I might want to take courses from other departments as well, if they might be beneficial. It's a little hard to find out about those, though, since there are so many schools and departments at U-M. It would be great to find out about courses that MBA students took outside of Ross"

Her primary source of information about the school has been their website. "They have Student Ambassadors whom you can email – I liked that feature, but I didn't find anyone with similar interests as me. It would be great if there was some central person who could direct me to people and resources related to my specific interests."

Raya also wants to get a 'feel' of classes at Ross, especially since she has never been outside France. "I want to hear what students think of the classes; what they like and dislike about the courses; which professors are really good. It would help me make my decision."

With her educational background and flair for art, Raya appreciates things that please her aesthetic sensibilities. "Presentation is so important. You might have baked the best pastry, but if it is not pleasing to the eye, then people will not want to eat it." She feels she gets more information out of websites if information is represented visually. "I know that is not always possible; but I think visually, so a website with visual representation of information always gets my attention."

When she isn't busy cooking gourmet French food, Raya enjoys socializing and making new connections, Neoclassical art and keeping in touch with her friends via Skyrock, a popular social networking website in France.