In my opinion, HELP systems are essential and useful for the majority of situations. However, I also feel the majority of people don't bother to check these systems out, even when they are legitimately confused and need help. I for the longest time did not use things like tutorials, until I just recently found spending time at the beginning learning the basics of a program/tool saves time in the long run. In my opinion, HELP systems, as in the tutorials and "Help" sections created by the actual software/design are becoming slowly and slowly less used, and may one day become obsolete. This is because of third party search sites like Google or Bing, which have absolutely massive amounts of resources available. Online help is extremely important, and will be even more in the future. However, this does not mean in any way Google can be a substitute for a good design. If for the most part a design can't be figured out just by a quick glance and seemingly use it effortlessly, it is destined to fail no matter what. I feel most software will always have technical aspects that the not so technically savvy person will not understand, and look online for help so it is essential they be there, and at the same time does not make it a substitute. No matter how simple the design, I feel there will be a need of some sort of online help or tutorial explaining how it works on all levels so everyone can understand it (this means everyone should understand the main concept of the design, but i don't think a design will ever be so good that there wont be a tutorial or online help threads for some feature of the design).
As far as the persona is concerned for project 5, I believe it is very important. We will have two personas (obviously). We hope to have one appeal to the younger crowd, kids that are avid fans of their favorite superhero. Our other persona is that of a die-hard fan, who knows all aspects of the superhero. Hopefully our design will appeal to both, as it is very important to satisfy the (although made up) needs and likes of our personas.
I find your point about information from Google taking the place of help features embedded in the software really interesting. I hadn't thought of that. The increase of resources available from third party sources has certainly changed the way we find tech help, but it has also changed the way that companies make their own tutorials available. In addition to embedded help features, many software companies also have websites with the same articles or other step-by-step tutorials. These websites offer similar or even the same information as a program's help feature, but in a "googleable" format. I've never thought of this as a reaction to the increase of third party help sources, but I wonder if the two might actually be related.
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