[IxDA Discuss] A question about Personas

[Todd Zaki Warfel]

Uh, what?

On Aug 21, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Douglas Brashear wrote:

> Well, why create and maintain documents merely recording the  
> information that could be obtained, at strategic points, “straight  
> from the horse’s mouth”? Perhaps heavily documented process is what  
> you have to do based on your clients (we’ve all been there). Just  
> seems like a waste.

Who says they're heavily documented? Did you look at the slides from  
my Data-driven Design Research presentation? If you did, you'd see  
they're a one pager each. Hardly what I would consider heavily  
documented.

We're not ones for doing documentation just for documentation  
purposes. In fact, the company name Messagefirst comes from "message  
first - method second." Our underlying philosophy is that the message  
or goal drives the method we choose. We don't do process for process  
sake. We don't do documentation for documentation sake. We pick  
what's most appropriate and do that based on needs and resources.

> Unless, of course, those documents are taken further, eventually  
> becoming detached from the users because not *every* piece of  
> information they contain comes directly from not just one user, but  
> a significant sampling of the target audience the persona  
> represents. In that case, we get back to my initial comment about  
> personas.

Detached how? You keep saying detached, but how are they becoming  
detached? If they're becoming detached, not evolving, not growing,  
not maturing, then you're doing them wrong. Perhaps you've only  
encountered incorrect personas.

> I find that a less contrived representation of target audience  
> intelligence works well for my clients. I say “less contrived”  
> because of the inappropriate expectations that personas sometimes  
> cause for those not used to working with them. After meeting user  
> group representatives I first categorize by audience type or role,  
> next by the most appropriate subcategorization and so on until all  
> major segments of the audience in question have been identified.

Do you mean contrived as designed, or artificially formal? If  
designed, are you saying that a less designed model works better for  
your clients? If artificially formal, I hardly see personae as being  
artificially formal, but again, that may be based on the model we  
use. I'm not sure what kind of model you've encountered (you haven't  
really shared that yet).

Because of what inappropriate expectations personas create?

BTW, the process you're describing to segment is pretty common. While  
it sounds rather exhaustive and lengthly based on your description,  
in my experience, it's something that can be done in at most a couple  
of hours with the right info and right people involved.

> I’m not sure how long your projects last, but I generally have 2 –  
> 3 months[...]

That's pretty typical for us as well.

> When it all comes down to it, I’ve never seen a project that could  
> have justified the additional time and expense (over the target  
> audience analysis I already perform) for the personas I see coming  
> from some agencies/consultants, and really question what additional  
> value, if any, doing such would have yielded. YMMV.

And I've never encountered a project that couldn't (didn't) benefit  
from them. The "additional time and expense" represents a huge ROI to  
the client. Perhaps you should study personas a bit more to uncover  
their true benefit. Try About Face, The User is Always Right for  
starters.

I'd be interested to see an example of the target audience analysis  
you use. Care to share? I'm sure there's something in there the  
community could benefit from.

I'm curious how you address opinion wars during design. How you  
prevent scope creep? How you handle suggestions from marketing,  
business, and dev that might sound good, but aren't on target with  
audience needs? How do you handle unified vs. segmented audiences?  
How do you keep the 8-24 or more people working on the project on the  
same page when design and dev gets distributed?

Can you get by without them? Sure, you can get by without wireframes  
too, or a prototype, but I wouldn't ever do that.

> BTW, what’s the charge number for this thread?

Huh?

BTW, Doug, please trim your posts in the future.


Cheers!

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