"Second, design deliverables are written for a specific audience: the design team. It's never expected that they have value to others outside the team."
I may be misreading your definition of design team, but I have to make a point here. Personas (good ones based on primary research) *can* and should be directed at others outside the design team, and they can be really useful. My past experience with personas is that I was the researcher and designer. There are inherent problems with that, but that was the situation. The process of building the personas rendered them useless to us (3 designers). We knew them by heart and never had to refer back to them. Now that said, we lived and breathed in research for about 6 months. We were also establishing UCD into the culture of that company. This is where the personas really became effective. Marketing and other execs were very impressed by the personas. We hung personas for 3 different audience targets outside of our cubes in a highly trafficked area. I can't count the number of times someone walked by, saw them and asked us what they were about. That's a perfect segue into an evangelistic conversation about UCD. "What is this? How did you make them? How will you use them?....really? We should do that on this other project..." It contributed to a ripple effect across the company, and now UCD is established as standard practice. That's just my experience - personas have been more valuable in selling the value of UCD than they were as an artifact for use by the design and/or engineering teams. Anyone else have this experience? Jeff On Nov 16, 2007 5:13 PM, Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 4:51 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: > > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 1:41 PM, Jared M. Spool wrote: > > > >> You can't look at the deliverables and say, "That one's good, but > >> that one's bad," anymore than you look at a designer and tell, just > >> by looks, if he has talent or not. > >> > >> The only way to see a well-crafted persona would be to have the > >> creators walk through their process with you. That's probably why, > >> when you look at the final deliverable, you can't tell the thinking > >> and research that went into it. > > > > If that's the stance people who push for personas as a useful part of > > the design process, then personas will continue simply fail. Design > > and research deliverables have to stand on their own, without some > > person explaining to you want went into it, or how it should be used > > to help someone do their work. Until more folks find a way to make > > deliverables that stand alone, then things like personas won't be > > very useful. > > Aw, come on, Andrei. That's just crap (with all due respect). > > First, personas *are* already successful. Many teams are using them > and getting great value out of them. They are not in general use, but > they are being applied in many applications and seeing much success, > by many different metrics. > > Second, design deliverables are written for a specific audience: the > design team. It's never expected that they have value to others > outside the team. A wireframe created for a specific team is often > meaningless to those outside. Same with specifications and often even > prototypes. Much happens *between the lines* in conversations and > shared experiences. > > To say that we have to make our within-team deliverables "stand > alone" without the context of the design project is just silly. > > There are some excellent writeups of the persona process and it's > potential deliverables. I'm a big fan of both Steve Mulder's The User > is Always Right and Pruitt & Adlin's The Persona Lifecycle. Both do a > quality job of showing the process and the deliverables, in my opinion. > > Cooper's Kim Goodwin has presented a quality workshop on the subject, > as have Kate Gomoll and Ellen Story. There's no lack of good examples > floating around out there -- you're just not trying hard to look at > them. > > One could just as easily argue that Dreyfuss's 17-page example is > excessive. If he can't do it in 2 pages, then no one will ever pay > attention to him. But, they don't, because that's just crap too. > > Third, in our research, the failed attempts at using personas > (projects where the persona process never finishes or doesn't have an > impact on the final design), doesn't come because people don't see > the value. On the contrary, they saw tremendous value from the get-go. > > Instead the primary causes of failure is (a) a lack of robustness in > the underlying research and analysis or (b) a poorly-executed > integration with the existing development process. In either of these > cases, the persona write-up factored very little. In fact, none of > the failed projects we uncovered were caused because the deliverable > poorly designed or failed to "stand on its own." > > So, before you start proclaiming what will or won't factor in the > adoption of personas, I suggest you do a little homework on how teams > actually use these techniques. > > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *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 > ________________________________________________________________ *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
