I assume I'm going to get flak for this, but here goes... >From my own perspective, here are my thoughts on why personas aren't more abundant, why they aren't done well, and how they can be done more often: 1: If someone can invent a 25th hour in the day, folks may use that time to embed proper personas into their work 2: Perhaps it's different in companies that are fully staffed for UCD work, but I've seen about a dozen companies who barely have the time for an actual *design* phase before development, much less anything that doesn't directly impact the outcome of the project (yes, the perception is that "if it's not wrapped up and presented to the user at the end, it's non-value-add"...I don't make the rules, I just follow them). 3: As a guerrilla UCD practitioner (no, I don't have a human factors degree), I use the term "personas" only in a very loose sense, to capture the known quantifiable statistics about my audience, and finish them out with my own experience. I wouldn't pretend my personas are valuable beyond the direct work that I do, and would never submit them for UCD peer review. I do about seven different jobs, so as expected, Personas get about 1/7th of my time (at best). 4: Instead of "fighting bad persona work", I would suggest proving to people (by unambiguous example) how personas yield a better product. My greatest challenge as UCD director (yes, those who can't do, direct) at my last company was not in educating people. After the 3rd year most folks understood most of the methods. The challenge was proving that it improved the outcome. We eventually built several solid case studies that garnered us respect in the IT project community. Adding extra time to a 2 month project for diligent research into personas is invaluable, but a tough sell.
5: The fact in some groups is that the impact of unusable systems (for lack of personas, for instance) is not borne by the people who built it. They have typically moved on long before users have begun feeling the effect. Therefore, personas (and general UCD) must be sold to the business customers, and not the tech leads in charge of implementation. This one applied to my last enterprise IT group, so it may not apply to design firms... Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Zaki Warfel Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 11:32 AM To: Jeff White Cc: ixd-discussion Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples where personas are *not* useful On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Jeff White wrote: > It disturbs me that some in our profession think a persona can be > non-data driven. It's bad for our profession if we have people out > there calling their guesswork personas. As you say, personas have been > well defined by many in our field for a long time. Heck, just the > general concepts that 1) user research is important, and 2) that it > should be based on well conducted, objective, non-biased techniques > and data is the core concept of UCD and should be common knowledge > to any UCD practitioner[...] > > Why is this happening and what can we do to fight it? Education. This disturbs me as well. This past year I taught a full day workshop on crafting data-driven design research personas-this is my fourth time teaching such a workshop/class. Just like every other time I've taught it, I began by asking, by a show of hands, how many people have actually been involved in persona creation-little more than half. When asked how they learned the methods they used to create personas, I get the same responses: 1. "I read About Face." 2. "I looked at other sample personas." 3. "I worked with someone who had done them before." 4. "I read the Persona Lifecycle book." (this one was new) First of all, About Face, while I love the book, doesn't actually describe in great detail how to create personas. It talks about them, but doesn't describe the craft particularly well. The fact is that there are very few detailed resources available for how-tos on constructing personas that are data-driven (the only true persona as far as I'm concerned). The most thorough book might be the Persona Lifecycle, but I don't find it particularly useful for a number of reasons I've already stated in the past. Looking at other examples of personas-frankly, I find that a bit scary. I don't know of too many good persona examples out there. Even Forrester, who has a scoring system for personas, which while not as comprehensive as what I expect, does provide a pretty good measure for personas, sampled close to two dozen firms for persona work this past year and only 2 came out with passing grades-2 out of 23-25. What does that say about the quality of persona work coming out of our field today? So, how do we fight it? Education. Those of us who can, also need to teach. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
