On Nov 27, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Jeff White wrote: > If a persona is a process, not a deliverable, then maybe we should > call it that. If it's a process, how's it any different from > conducting interviews, observation, ethnography, etc?
To keep our terminology straight at UIE, we've labeled the process of creating personas as "persona creation". (We're not very imaginative.) The usual deliverables we call a "persona description" and a "persona reference card". The individual character is what we call the "persona". So, a persona project would have one persona creation process to produce 3 to 7 personas, each with a persona description. The persona creation process includes a research stage, whereby a field study is the typical research instrument. (There is debate as to whether field studies are always ethnographic research or if ethnographic research is a variant of a field study. I don't think we want to split that hair at this point.) However, the persona creation process, in our definition, includes three other stages: data analysis, persona and scenario deliverable creation, and project integration. > But I disagree with Alan, Jared and Todd > **if** they are proposing that personas are always useful and should > always be done. I've never said they are always useful and should always be done. They are a tool in the toolbox. Like any tool, they have their contexts where they are valuable. There are contexts where their value will not be worth the resource investment required. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks ________________________________________________________________ *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
