Hello, Long-time persona skeptic here. IMHO, understanding the people whose lives you are going to affect with your decisions is non-negotiable. If you're not doing that, you can't say you're "designing." But any particular method IS negotiable and probably expendable or at least flexible. Which leads to my issue with at least some of the practice related to personas: the method sometimes seems to substitute for the goal. Personas are sometimes made without real understanding and empathy making it into the heads and hearts of the team. As others have pointed out on this thread and others in the past, one can achieve that goal with or without persona.
I'm grateful to have persona as one item in the Big Bag of Tricks for communicating insights and facilitating understanding. But as soon as they become "part of the process," I start to worry that the desire for a standard, easily-teachable and repeatable approach has suppressed the more critical need to wisely choose methods to suit the situation. If clients are questioning the value of persona, I'd say they're asking good questions. In answer to that questioning, I would want to engage in a conversation about Who needs to understand What in order to design well, what stands in the way of the team's unity of vision and intention, and what methods could be brought to bear on the situation. Cheers, Marc . . . Marc Rettig Fit Associates, LLC ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
