Jared - I only quickly scanned the article and comments, but it didn't seem like the pushback was aimed at your statement that non-data driven personas either 1)just suck and shouldn't be used or 2)are something else entirely.
It seemed the pushback was targeted to the name you gave the sucky personas, which I can see. But again, I just scanned the article. To me, it's common sense (did I just say that?) that if a persona isn't data driven, it's not a persona. Frankly I don't really care what it *is* called, because I think it's most likely bad practice and shouldn't be given a name in the first place. 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, IMO!!!!!!! I think I'm rambling but hopefully my point is coming across. Why is this happening and what can we do to fight it? Jeff On Nov 16, 2007 11:03 AM, Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In every description I've ever read of creating personas (yours, Cooper's, > Pruitt & Adlin's, Gomoll & Story's, and Mulder's are the first to come to > mind), they all go into great depth about the data collection and synthesis > methods. I've never seen a persona creation description that just said, > "It's ok to just write up what you think your users are like based on your > experience and gut feel." (Andrea Wiggins' latest Boxes and Arrows article > [http://tinyurl.com/33hrta] comes close, but claims to be data backed under > the guise that analytics are useful data points.) > > So, I don't know why, all of a sudden, there's this pushback to call > non-data-driven user descriptions personas. They feel like something else > entirely to me. > > Jared > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:46 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote: > > > Couldn't agree more with this. Which is exactly why we do data-driven > personas. > > Data Driven Design Research Personas > > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:01 AM, Jared M. Spool wrote: > (Personally, I believe when personas are not built on objective > research, they aren't personas -- they are something else. However, I > got flack for this idea when I posted it here: http://tinyurl.com/ > yuzaak ) > > > > 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
