The goal of a designer should be to design so that help systems are not necessary. However, given constraints (time, information, technology), they must occasionally be implemented.
I understand the argument that more obvious design should always be able to overcome the need for help systems, but I disagree. As designers develop ways to make tasks more obvious, they in turn allow themselves to design for more complicated tasks. If this process ended, and designers were told to stop taming higher orders of complexity and instead focus on making everything that has been designed more obvious, help systems might disappear. However, I don't imagine this will happen any time soon.
In terms of developing personas for project 5, I think of comic books as being something where you are either in or your out. You don't care at all, or you really like comic books, there's not a lot of middle ground. Our personas should probably then be the hardcore fans because they are the ones that buy lots of comics, and have strong opinions about what specific heroes should and shouldn't have.
I agree with you in the way that help systems might/ should disappear with more focus on designing more obvious, however I think we are close to having no HELP systems.
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