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 ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
