[IxDA Discuss] (Ab)using personas to model managers, programmers and other stakeholders....

[Jared M. Spool]

On Jul 1, 2007, at 10:05 PM, Michael Scharf wrote:

> Has anyone here created personas for the
> stakeholders interaction designers have to deal
> with?

I haven't seen anyone do this specifically, but I've seen  
organizations create their own deliverable models to understand what  
various players in the organization need.

Like any type of personas, you should be careful not to generalize  
too far. You want to base your personas on research of real people.  
So, if you were going to create personas for the stakeholders *you*  
are delivering too, you'd need to do thorough research on who these  
folks are and what they need. If you don't do the research, then  
you're just making assumptions on stereotypes, which, in the long  
run, probably won't benefit you.

Most of the teams I've observed don't have so many stakeholders that  
a personas model would be beneficial. Usually there's only a few key  
folks and it's better just to talk to them directly about what they  
need than to abstract their needs into an intermediary level.

Hope that helps,

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks