Extreme Characters (also known as brink users and extreme users) is a methodology used within user-centered design in order to represent edge case users of a product, brand or user interface. Extreme Characters also fits under the umbrella of market segmentation within marketing as it formulates design solutions for both average users and extreme, brink users. The concept of creating extreme users has been adopted heavily into the concept user-centered design and human-centered computing, and has led to its wide adoption both within online and offline applications, along with its placement within marketing communications.
Extreme characters is based within designing for the brink users for a product, this behaviour is cultivated through the collection of data through focus groups and interviews with specific users. From this, a clear goal, or user need, is formulated. By designing for a user need that is only reflected by a minority of the focus group, the use-case of extreme users is born. Through designing for this minority, design solutions stem for both use brink users, and the average user.
The concept of extreme characters has, however, come under scrutiny, leading to a critique of its placement within user-centered design and marketing. This scrutiny comes under the umbrella that it leads designers and marketers away from the target market for a specific product or service. Moreover, the critique also dictates that the methodology does not ultimately portray real end users of a specific product or service.
Through the use of extreme users, designers are able to characterise and formulate their products needs to fit around the extreme users differing contexts. By observing these work arounds the extreme users use, it allows for the designer to not only form a product for the general population, but for also these brink users.
Finally, the influence of extreme characters can be seen to have formed landmark technologies. This can clearly be seen with J. Djajadiningrat's Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters referencing the creation of first telephone by Alexander Graham Bell and the creation of the first closed source email protocol within the year 1972 by Vint Cerf. It also has a large play in modernistic technology and its overall design. This can be seen with the creation of the Nintendo Wii and the redesign of the Ford Focus.
History
The earliest study that coined the name 'extreme characters/extreme users' for this approach was J. Djajadiningrat's Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters. It is here that the concept of using brink users for the exploration of unexplored use cases for a product or service. However, the concept of using extreme characters in the user experience of product or services can be dated back to the 19th century.
This can be seen with through Vint Cerf's exploration into programming a closed source email protocol within the year 1972. From his programming, he communicated that through the capability for electronic letters within a closed network, he was inherently able to talk to his deaf wife whilst they were both at work.
Moreover, another known landmark use of this design methodology before the cultivation of its academic recognition within the aforementioned J. Djajadiningrat's study, was Alexander Graham Bell's work with the deaf formulating in his patient for the first telephone. Through designing for patient with hearing difficulties, a user that is not inherently the 'generic user', Bell's work cultivated in one of the biggest telecommunication leaps in the modern age.