Great thread. I read "About Face" and then I attended a short course at CooperU this summer. I learned how to do personas correctly. It was revealing for me and I recommend CooperU to any and all that are serious about ui/ux. Immediately after my glorious summer I went to work, under contract, for a major software company based in the Pacific Northwest. Here, in the winter of my discontent, I am told, "We don't do personas". Digging further, it seems that personas have been corrupted from having too much distance between the creation of the personas (years ago) and the use of the personas. This allows old end-user interview data to be replaced by subjective stakeholder opinon and invalidates the whole process. For each separate product, a fresh set of personas need to be prepared. THIS is where the rubber actually meets the road. Do the user research. It is the tough part. It seems unproductive, but mistakes will be made otherwise. Critical, fundamental mistakes will be made. The toughest part is to take your own self out of the design process. Well, it is the hard part for me. Personas facilitate this greatly. But I can only lean on a persona to the extent that I trust it. If the persona was created in the nineties when Windows95 was the OS, what use is that? Personas are the only way to move forward confidently with interaction design. They require a lot of work and there is also a degree of skill that is required in compiling and correlating interview data to derive the personas. But this is theessential work of interaction design. Everything else is just the fun stuff. Dave >-----Original Message----- >From: Bryan Minihan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 12:12 PM >To: ''Todd Zaki Warfel'', ''Jeff White'' >Cc: ''ixd-discussion'' >Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples where personas are *not* useful > >I assume I'm going to get flak for this, but here goes... > >>From my own perspective, here are my thoughts on why personas aren't more >abundant, why they aren't done well, and how they can be done more often: >1: If someone can invent a 25th hour in the day, folks may use that time to >embed proper personas into their work >2: Perhaps it's different in companies that are fully staffed for UCD work, >but I've seen about a dozen companies who barely have the time for an actual >*design* phase before development, much less anything that doesn't directly >impact the outcome of the project (yes, the perception is that "if it's not >wrapped up and presented to the user at the end, it's non-value-add"...I >don't make the rules, I just follow them). >3: As a guerrilla UCD practitioner (no, I don't have a human factors >degree), I use the term "personas" only in a very loose sense, to capture >the known quantifiable statistics about my audience, and finish them out >with my own experience. I wouldn't pretend my personas are valuable beyond >the direct work that I do, and would never submit them for UCD peer review. >I do about seven different jobs, so as expected, Personas get about 1/7th of >my time (at best). >4: Instead of "fighting bad persona work", I would suggest proving to >people (by unambiguous example) how personas yield a better product. My >greatest challenge as UCD director (yes, those who can't do, direct) at my >last company was not in educating people. After the 3rd year most folks >understood most of the methods. The challenge was proving that it improved >the outcome. We eventually built several solid case studies that garnered >us respect in the IT project community. Adding extra time to a 2 month >project for diligent research into personas is invaluable, but a tough sell. > >5: The fact in some groups is that the impact of unusable systems (for lack >of personas, for instance) is not borne by the people who built it. They >have typically moved on long before users have begun feeling the effect. >Therefore, personas (and general UCD) must be sold to the business >customers, and not the tech leads in charge of implementation. This one >applied to my last enterprise IT group, so it may not apply to design >firms... > >Bryan >http://www.bryanminihan.com > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd >Zaki Warfel >Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 11:32 AM >To: Jeff White >Cc: ixd-discussion >Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples where personas are *not* useful > > >On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Jeff White wrote: > >> 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[...] >> >> Why is this happening and what can we do to fight it? > >Education. > >This disturbs me as well. This past year I taught a full day workshop >on crafting data-driven design research personas-this is my fourth >time teaching such a workshop/class. Just like every other time I've >taught it, I began by asking, by a show of hands, how many people have >actually been involved in persona creation-little more than half. When >asked how they learned the methods they used to create personas, I get >the same responses: > >1. "I read About Face." >2. "I looked at other sample personas." >3. "I worked with someone who had done them before." >4. "I read the Persona Lifecycle book." (this one was new) > >First of all, About Face, while I love the book, doesn't actually >describe in great detail how to create personas. It talks about them, >but doesn't describe the craft particularly well. The fact is that >there are very few detailed resources available for how-tos on >constructing personas that are data-driven (the only true persona as >far as I'm concerned). The most thorough book might be the Persona >Lifecycle, but I don't find it particularly useful for a number of >reasons I've already stated in the past. > >Looking at other examples of personas-frankly, I find that a bit >scary. I don't know of too many good persona examples out there. Even >Forrester, who has a scoring system for personas, which while not as >comprehensive as what I expect, does provide a pretty good measure for >personas, sampled close to two dozen firms for persona work this past >year and only 2 came out with passing grades-2 out of 23-25. What does >that say about the quality of persona work coming out of our field >today? > >So, how do we fight it? Education. Those of us who can, also need to >teach. > > >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 ....... 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