[IxDA Discuss] A question about Personas

[Todd Zaki Warfel]

On Aug 21, 2007, at 9:47 AM, Stew Dean wrote:

> I'm going to go against the general wisdom here and say instead of  
> creating Personas instead base your activity upon real user tasks.  
> The danger with personas is they can turn into the kinds of pencil  
> portraits that marketing enjoy using and this can lead onto filling  
> in the gaps with 'made up stuff'.

Which is precisely why personas should be based on real data, real  
behaviors, real scenarios, and real people.

At Messagefirs, we base our personas on real tasks from real users  
and include scenarios. They also have a persona DNA - a profile map  
based on knowledge, activities, and behaviors of real people. You can  
find out more from a workshop I did at this year's UPA on Data Driven  
Design Research Personas.

http://toddwarfel.com/archives/looking-back-on-data-driven-design- 
research-personas/

> [...]The personas where next to useless as they had indication of  
> what was real and what was imagined and how the conclusions in the  
> personas where reached. The personas incidently where beautiful,  
> had had many weeks work put into them, lavish graphic design and  
> wonderful writing and went into lots of pointless detail - they  
> just simply where too far removed from real users.

Personas should be based on real data - not made up fuzzy feelings.  
Real data. Real scenarios. Real people. The realness should come  
first, beauty second. And it's entirely possible to make useful,  
usable, beautiful artifacts.


Cheers!

Todd Zaki Warfel
President, Design Researcher
Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully.
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