NAME: Annanbel
AGE: 20 years-old
LOCATION: Allegheny College, PA
OCCUPATION: Undergraduate English major
BIO:
Annabel is an incoming junior at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. She's well over half way complete with her English major and is signed up for a 300-level Shakespeare class this fall. The semester-long course will examine 6 or 7 different works by Shakespeare including some of his lesser-known plays. Annabel is in a tough financial position after her unpaid journalism internship in Washington DC this past summer and is looking to save money by not purchasing pyhical books on the reading list for this class. She needs an easy way to read and search through Shakespeare's works so she can be prepared and engaged during class. She'd also like to be able to save passages for easy reference when she writes her term paper.
COMFORT WITH TECHNOLOGY:
Young person, probably very comfortable with technology.
NEEDS:
She needs an easy way to read and search through Shakespeare's works so she can be prepared and engaged during class. She'd also like to be able to save passages for easy reference when she writes her term paper.
FRUSTRATION:
All of Shakespeare's work is available online, often in loooooooooong single pages of plain text that are difficult to read and hard to search through. She needs an app that better organizes all this content.
DESIRED PLATFORMS:
- Tablet for easy of reading, especially in class.
- Laptop while working on papers.
NAME: Chris
AGE: 16-years-old
LOCATION: Chicago, IL
OCCUPATION: High school student
BIO:
Chris will be studying Hamlet in his English class this year. It will be his first exposure to Shakespeare and he's not looking forward to it. He knows the language will be very different to what he's used to speaking/reading. His grades in English aren't the best, and he's nervous that if he struggles with Shakespeare he might fail and have to take summer classes.
COMFORT WITH TECHNOLOGY:
Very comfortable. Information Technology and computer science are Chris's strengths as a student and likely what he'll pursue professionally or through tertiary education.
NEEDS:
Help translating Elizabethan English. Also needs to be able to save passages he doesn't understand so he can ask his teacher to explain them in class.
FRUSTRATION:
Chris struggles with reading comprehension in modern books, and the Elizabethan English of Shakespeare's work only compounds that problem. It's hard to stay engaged with a text if you can't follow the story. For many young modern day readers like Chris, Shakespeare is frustrating and/or boring.
DESIRED PLATFORMS:
- Tablet