“Blending celebrity and international diplomacy in a near-future Paris, Valentine crafts an intimate thriller than unmasks the players in the game.” —Publishers Weekly When Suyana, Face of the recently formed United Amazonia Rainforest Confederation, is secretly meeting Ethan of the United States, a potential ally for her struggling country, the last thing she expected to be was a victim of an assassination attempt. Daniel, a teen runaway turned paparazzo hoping to make a name for himself, witnesses the first shot targeted for Suyana. Without thinking, he jumps into the action telling himself it’s not selflessness, it’s the scoop. Now Suyana and Daniel are on the run—and if they don’t keep themselves one step ahead, they’ll lose it all.

In this limited edition, French makeup legend, beauty mogul, and esteemed photographer François Nars unveils his long-awaited collection of more than 300 new photographs—dramatic and provocative portraits of creative figures of all ages that capture the beauty and essence of each persona. Persona reveals an extraordinary production of cinematic, avant-garde portraits of an exclusive list of contemporary creative icons. The celebrities, artists, designers, musicians, and actors featured include Tilda Swinton, Naomi Campbell, Kyle MacLachlan, Sharon Stone, Bella Hadid, Isabelle Adjani, Cindy Sherman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Marina Abramovic, Liv Tyler, Christian Lacroix, Tadao Ando, and Marianne Faithfull. Nars has never sought to hide the imperfections and oddities that give faces their personality, but rather to accentuate them in dramatic and surprising ways—think bold, dark, painstakingly crafted eyes offset by clear, almost bare skin. The arresting images in this volume, shot in color against a rich black background with dramatic lighting, explore themes of provocation, sharp humor, and unconventional beauty, always with an edgy dose of glamour. This undoubtedly unique and gorgeous volume, printed using specialty inks to produce images in ultrarich vibrant colors with high gloss, is a true collector’s item for style, culture, and photography enthusiasts alike.

The essays collected in this volume use a variety of methodologies to explore Bergman's Persona.

Data-driven personas are a significant advancement in the fields of human-centered informatics and human-computer interaction. Data-driven personas enhance user understanding by combining the empathy inherent with personas with the rationality inherent in analytics using computational methods. Via the employment of these computational methods, the data-driven persona method permits the use of large-scale user data, which is a novel advancement in persona creation. A common approach for increasing stakeholder engagement about audiences, customers, or users, persona creation remained relatively unchanged for several decades. However, the availability of digital user data, data science algorithms, and easy access to analytics platforms provide avenues and opportunities to enhance personas from often sketchy representations of user segments to precise, actionable, interactive decision-making tools—data-driven personas! Using the data-driven approach, the persona profile can serve as an interface to a fully functional analytics system that can present user representation at various levels of information granularity for more task-aligned user insights. We trace the techniques that have enabled the development of data-driven personas and then conceptually frame how one can leverage data-driven personas as tools for both empathizing with and understanding of users. Presenting a conceptual framework consisting of (a) persona benefits, (b) analytics benefits, and (c) decision-making outcomes, we illustrate applying this framework via practical use cases in areas of system design, digital marketing, and content creation to demonstrate the application of data-driven personas in practical applied situations. We then present an overview of a fully functional data-driven persona system as an example of multi-level information aggregation needed for decision making about users. We demonstrate that data-driven personas systems can provide critical, empathetic, and user understanding functionalities for anyone needing such insights.

"The persona is our mask - the place in our personality where who we are perceived to be confronts who we really are. But, as C. G. Jung understood, the persona is not to be disregarded in the search for our true selves, but rather to be honored as an essential part of the rich and complex configuration of the whole person. Robert Hopcke underscores the persona's essential role of mediator between our inner and outer worlds. He follows the concept from Jung's original theory into its persistent manifestations in traditional rituals and the arts, and on into the lives of real men and women to explore such questions as: what is the result of identifying too completely with one's persona?; is it possible not to have a persona?; what part does persona play in sex roles and communication between the sexes?; how do people whose inner selves clash with cultural expectations - like women, gays and lesbians, and people of color - use their personas to adapt?"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas offers a practical guide to the creation and use of personas, which can help product designers, their team, and their organization become more user focused. This book is for people who just need to know what to do and what order to do it in. It is completely focused on practical tools and methods, without much explanation on why the particular tool or method is the right one. The book discusses the five phases of persona lifecycle: Family planning — Basic ideas and a few tools that will help one get organized Conception and gestation — Step-by-step instructions to move from assumptions to completed personas Birth and maturation — Strategic techniques to get the right information about ones personas out to ones your teammates at the right time Adulthood — Specific tools that will ensure that ones personas are used by the right people at the right times and in the right ways during the product development cycle Lifetime achievement and retirement — Basic ideas and a few tools to you measure the success of the persona effort and prepare for the next one Practical and immediately applicable how-to reference guide for building and using personas – from planning, creating, launching, evaluating, and determining ROI Invaluable guide that gives you a quick reference for incorporating personas into a product development process Features all the essential how-to material from its parent book, The Persona Lifecycle, as a quick, at your fingertips companion

Persona is the Latin word for the mask used in Greek drama with which the actor assumed his role and defined his identity. Perlman analyzes the way in which adult roles assumed in work, marriage, and parenthood continue to shape human personality. Referring to Freud's definition of maturity as the ability to love and to work, she discusses how a person makes himself known through the roles involved in loving and working, what expectations a person brings to each role, and what personal changes can come about through the demands of being a worker, marriage partner, and parent.