The Digital Native Persona

Photo by Patricia Dekker at stock.xchng

As soon as I stepped in the door after driving home from work last night, Rebecka (my 12-year-old daughter) was asking me to please come over to see what she had been working on all day. “On the computer?” I assumed. Indeed. I didn’t quite know what to expect. Maybe a new house design in Google SketchUp? (We’re still working on our dream house…) Not quite. What she presented to me was a 123-slide PowerPoint presentation, masterfully crafted to illustrate the history lesson which is Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” She skillfully clicked through the slideshow to the beat of the song playing on iTunes. This is what my child does for fun! I was impressed and told her she should create a video of the slideshow and music together. Her first thought was to video tape the screen with her Flip camcorder. However, I had a better idea. Five minutes later we had installed the 30-day trial of Camtasia on her laptop. I told her perhaps she should take the “product tour.” She asked, “Is this for kids?” “No,” I said, “but you should be able to figure it out.”

As I thought about this event the next morning, I realized that the digital natives are now entering the workforce and B2B products and offerings are going to have to take these types of users into consideration in a way that we haven’t in the past. There are some significant differences between how digital natives and digital immigrants interact with computers.

I am a digital immigrant. My first experience with a computer was toward the end of high school when I was tasked with creating user documentation for an accounting package the school had purchased (I suppose the user guide was extra). I didn’t own a computer until I was 21. I rarely played video games (they make me dizzy). As a child, I had an electronic typewriter and was thrilled to learn that it supported two different font styles.

• I easily lose track of what I’m doing if I try to jump around between multiple tasks. (Anyway, it’s more efficient to operate that way…)
• I’m OK with the default style.
• I can sit and wait for a little while to allow an application to load.
• I read help documentation, if I have to.

Rebecka is a digital native. She grew up with her own laptop and played computer games before she could read. In addition, she has an iPod, a portable DVD player, a cell phone, and a PS2 (I gave in…).

• She doesn’t do just one thing on the computer at a time. Rather, she quickly (and skillfully) jumps around between chat, email, YouTube, Google, and Club Penguin in a non-linear fashion.
• She expects everything to be customizable. In fact, from a distance, you can’t even tell that her Gmail is Gmail.
• If something doesn’t load immediately, she’s off to the next thing.
• Help what?? She assumes that she can just download a new app and start using it (like Camtasia…).

Obviously, companies have already created products and services for digital natives. IM, MySpace, other social media sites for kids disguised as virtual worlds with games and animals (Club Penguin, Webkinz, etc) and iTunes come to mind. However, I think it’s time B2B companies start taking the Digital Native persona into consideration as well. This persona may look something like this:

Photo by "channah" at stock.xchng

Name: Ashley Johnson
Age: 23 years old
Education: College Degree in Marketing
Profession: Marketing Manager
Computer Skills: Has been using the MS Office Suite since she was in middle school, has four different email accounts online, expert on searching using Google and Yahoo, proficient with Google Analytics and AdWords, basically knows how to do everything!
Goals: Wants to be able to start up a new program and be productive within two minutes. Wants help to come to her as she needs it. Would prefer if her program also had links to Facebook, YouTube, and SlideShare. Wants to be able to IM, email, and do video chat with one click. Any service that she signs up for better come with a community forum so she can post questions to her fellow users and connect with them.

The list goes on… As you look toward the future of your products, don’t forget to keep the digital native in mind. They’ll be the majority before we know it!