I want to kind of expand on Liz's point a little, and maybe take this
in a slightly different direction. Personas are to digital products as
a tape measure is to a bookcase. Critics of personas often seem to
have an intense focus on validity of the tool, without a lot of
discussion about what it is people are trying to do with personas. As
I understand and use personas, their value has less to do with their
accuracy and more to do with their human qualities and specificity.
A persona provides me as a designer (and the team at large) a specific
person to identify with. A lot of products don't treat people very
well, and having a persona around as a constant reminder that the
product is interacting with a specific person helps us avoid treating
people like anonymous "users." Personas help keep me empathetic.
A persona also provides a shorthand for whatever research has been
done and helps keeps things focused in context. So, when I say "Does
Joan [the persona] need that feature?" it's often just a quicker (and
nicer) way of saying "Remember that we did a bunch of research and
came to agreement on who the target is for our design? This random
request from a single user doesn't seem to match our data, so let's
stay on target until there's some more evidence that this is a real
concern."
Now, I'm kind of downplaying the importance of personas being a good
archetype of the user base, which is not to say that I don't think
that's important too, but being "right" is only aspect of why they are
a handy tool.
-Adam
On Nov 17, 2008, at 3:46 AM, Elizabeth Bacon wrote:
Personas are not any kind of be-all end-all method, so don't
misconstrue my points. They can, however, be a powerful tool in a
designer's toolkit.
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