Hey Mike, I sent these ideas out yesterday in response to a similar question around developing personas without interviews, but for some reason it didn't get posted to the list. These are just some ideas, and if anyone has others, I'd enjoy hearing them.
1. Find people who understand your users in the company. Start with marketing, and schedule some time with them to understand what their various marketing profiles are. See if you can learn anything from them. 2. If I can't get any research to back up my personas, I call them *profiles* and make it clear that they aren't research-based, and really can't be considered a substitution for personas. Instead, this should be used to get your foot in the door with the key decision makers. If they start to appreciate the impact of your user profiles, your follow up is "there is a ton of valuable information that should be added to these that I can only get with user interviews." If you're making profiles, I'd recommend coming up with some sort of framework around which you'll vary your profiles so that it's still somewhat systematic. Some examples of dimensions for your framework might include: * Familiarity with the site * Learning Style (this article used learning style, I thought it was interesting: http://marketingblog.realestategrowth.com/archives/creating-killer-web-p ersonas-in-under-30-minutes.html) * Technical Proficiency * Anything else that makes sense for what you're working on If, in expanding out your framework, someone you know fits certain dimensions, then think about them... it will at least ground your empathy in something concrete instead of simply your best guess. Good luck! -Sam -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Sorvillo Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 12:14 PM To: IxDA Discuss Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Behaviors without interviews Hi everyone, I just joined this discussion group a few weeks ago and I've been reading them non-stop :) I just started a position and I'm beginning to do a re-design of a desktop application. I was assigned with the task of redesigning the user interface, but the application as a whole is kinda of a mess...it is just features packed on top of features packed on top of features and there is no cohesion of the application as a whole. So I planned to interview a bunch of different users and non-users to find out some behaviors, and after all the planning, I found out I am unable to do the interviews...but I can do a multiple choice survey that we can blast to our user base. I am really hesitant to come up with personas without doing background research, although I do have a "gut" feeling of who the personas will be. Is it possible that the results of this survey will hurt persona development, rather than help it? Are there any other ideas of how I can learn about behaviors without interviews? One thing I was thinking was basing them off of different types of people I know (friends and family). Thanks! --mike ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
