[IxDA Discuss] A question about Personas

[Douglas Brashear]

Hahaha...I like answers like "not in our shop they don't". Reminds me of
the car dealer where I dropped my car this morning. ;-) 

 

"If they're becoming detached, you're not doing them correctly." Well,
I'll just leave that one alone.

 

If multiple people are consulted for your personas, and the personas
mature over time like the people, and therefore the personas always
contain the same information that could be obtained directly from your
audience representatives, then congratulations, you just wasted the
amount of time and client money it took to create the personas. 

 

Now *that's* something we don't do in "my shop". :-)

 

All in good fun...seriously, this seems like a great group of people. We
may disagree on points here or there, but what's most important is that
we all have a view backed by our experiences. I think I'm going to like
it here.

 

- Doug

 

_________________________

Doug Brashear

Senior Information Architect

NavigationArts, LLC

703.584.8933 (office)

703.725.8031 (mobile)

dbrashear at navigationarts.com

________________________________

From: Todd Zaki Warfel [mailto:lists at toddwarfel.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:01 PM
To: Douglas Brashear
Cc: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] A question about Personas

 

 

On Aug 21, 2007, at 12:34 PM, Douglas Brashear wrote:





If there are real people backing them up, why not bag the personas and
just ask the...ahem...real people? 

 

We do. We use real people as one of the many inputs that provide the
data for our data-driven personas. But unlike just one "ahem...real
people" personas are representative of a particular audience. For us, we
use multiple inputs. So, our personas come from multiple real people
that fit that audience. And we continue to evolve them over time. So, as
the product or service grows and evolves, we check in with our personas
and the real people we based them off of.





At some point when you "documentize" someone's input, you make
inferences about them or what they would want. At some point in your use
of the persona it becomes detached from the thoughts, needs, wants,
capabilities and limitations of the actual target audience
representatives. 

 

Not in our shop they don't. That does happen in most cases, but not
here. Again, this has to do with the evolutionary lifecycle of the
persona - when done properly. They mature, just like real people. Ours
do not become detached. If they're becoming detached, you're not doing
them correctly. 

 

	Personas are often represented by Interactive Designers as
"virtual participants", but they fail to consistently yield fact-based
guidance for projects. At some point a leap is made that extends the
information in the persona too far to be directly tied back to an actual
user. Sometimes, by holding them up as these virtual users, you can
mistakenly set the expectations of your project stakeholders too high.

 

Again, this gets back to improper development, maturation, and use of
personas. If you're doing them correctly, this shouldn't and doesn't
happen. 

 

	Why not make cardboard "standees" too, and give them vices like
"smoker" or "compulsive gambler" too? ;-)

 

While we haven't gone that far, we've come close. And I have spoken to
others who have done this, or dressed up mannequins. 

 


Cheers!

 

Todd Zaki Warfel

President, Design Researcher

Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully.

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Email:      todd at messagefirst.com

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