Hi Oliver, Personas are a powerful and widely applicable design tool, but they do have their caveats.
Personas are more difficult to develop for consumer products as opposed to professional applications where roles are clearly delineated. The former requires more extensive (usually qualitative) user research to determine the behavior patterns that underly the potential user types, which tend to be based on lifestyle choices that can be fuzzy and thus tricky to tease apart. Similarly, projects that are more exploratory or blue sky in nature, e.g., the future of television, are more difficult to apply personas to, because the customer research necessary would need to be fairly broad (dozens of field interviews) to yield meaningful outcomes. That said, personas (especially when validated with quantitative research) are still very useful to such an endeavor; the weakness lies in the amount of work and time required to get useful results. Personas are descriptive of behavior patterns as they currently exist. They are not, on their own, necessarily predictors of behavior change in the wake of disruptive technologies (though they can help designers understand this with the right supporting data). Finally, as Adrian points out, personas are of limited use without accompanying scenarios that explicate context-based activities, tasks, and goals. I would not agree that activities/scenarios are more important than personas; that is like saying that the story line of a novel is more important than its characters: one cannot properly exist without the other. Robert. On Nov 13, 2007 12:19 PM, oliver green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I am trying to understand the finer nuances of using personas. The > various articles/book chapters that I have read talk about instances > where using personas would be useful. But I feel that to really > understand a methodology, one should be familiar with the weaknesses > as well. So, can you give me examples where using personas would not > be advisable/helpful? > > Thanks, > Oliver > ________________________________________________________________ > *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 > -- Robert Reimann President Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Associate Creative Director frog design Seattle, WA ________________________________________________________________ *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
