I'm late in the discussion, so I may have missed relevant comments before - but this one caught my eye:
Jared wrote: > In every description I've ever read of creating personas (yours, > Cooper's, Pruitt & Adlin's, Gomoll & Story's, and Mulder's are the > first to come to mind), they all go into great depth about the data > collection and synthesis methods. I've never seen a persona creation > description that just said, "It's ok to just write up what you think > your users are like based on your experience and gut feel." (Andrea > Wiggins' latest Boxes and Arrows article [http://tinyurl.com/33hrta] > comes close, but claims to be data backed under the guise that > analytics are useful data points.) What about Norman's article: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/personas_empath.html where he writes: "As a consultant to companies, I often find myself having to make my points quickly -- quite often in only a few hours. This short duration makes it impossible to have any serious attempt to gather data or use real observations. Instead, I have found that people can often mine their own extensive experiences to create effective Personas that bring home design points strongly and effectively." I mostly work with folks that have little or no design practice at all. For me, in that context, best practice starts with assembling piles of assumptions about their users. I find that people who build software in a specific area aren't completely in the dark about who their users are. It's hard to call their information complete assumption since it's based on lots of experience - some of it very specific. Given a pile of assumptive-facts I can walk them through assembling a persona - which immediately gives those facts some life. For some reason I find people who actually do know something about their users still self-substitute and this sort of assumption based persona helps stop that - or at least makes it more clear when they are. >From here we can move on by asking the questions: "how good are these assumptions?" "How risky is it to make critical design decisions based on them?" and "what research do we need to do to replace the most risky assumptions with real facts and observations?" Before building assumption-based personas, it's harder for me to make the case for research. Having participants see the process of building a persona seems to demystify it - and make the whole idea of doing a few interviews and a bit of observation more palatable. If often hear "You know it wouldn't be too hard to line up a couple customer visits..." from people who were resistant a few minutes ago. They can now see themselves where and how the information they get will be used. > So, I don't know why, all of a sudden, there's this pushback to call > non-data-driven user descriptions personas. They feel like something > else entirely to me. I've been using Pruitt & Adlin's term "assumption-based personas." I've used Cooper's "persona hypothesis" and "provisional persona" terms as well. On looking back to the Norman post, "ad hoc persona" doesn't sound so bad. It feels like building a persona based on assumption - or second-hand suspect fact - is an important first step to understanding what sorts of facts you need and demonstrating how important getting them are. I worry that being too stringent about having good data stops people from practicing the technique at all. Finally, I find that even a crappy pile of assumptions we all agree to use as a common design target is better than no design target - or the disparate assumptions a group of designers and developers carry around in their head and don't have any easy way to share. If non-data-driven user descriptions aren't persons - if they're something else entirely - what are they? What feels like a legitimate term? NDDUDs? It's not that they're non-data driven - just suspect data driven. SDDUDs? I'm not sure that they're something else "entirely." Thanks for causing me to think. -Jeff -------------------------------------------- Jeff Patton mobile: +1 (801) 910-7908 skype: jeff_patton www.agileproductdesign.com Agile usability discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-usability/ "There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing." --Mark Twain > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:discuss- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jared M. Spool > Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 4:04 PM > To: Todd Zaki Warfel > Cc: Jeff White; ixd-discussion > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples where personas are *not* useful > > In every description I've ever read of creating personas (yours, > Cooper's, Pruitt & Adlin's, Gomoll & Story's, and Mulder's are the > first to come to mind), they all go into great depth about the data > collection and synthesis methods. I've never seen a persona creation > description that just said, "It's ok to just write up what you think > your users are like based on your experience and gut feel." (Andrea > Wiggins' latest Boxes and Arrows article [http://tinyurl.com/33hrta] > comes close, but claims to be data backed under the guise that > analytics are useful data points.) > > So, I don't know why, all of a sudden, there's this pushback to call > non-data-driven user descriptions personas. They feel like something > else entirely to me. > > Jared > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:46 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote: > > > Couldn't agree more with this. Which is exactly why we do data- > > driven personas. > > > > Data Driven Design Research Personas > > > > On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:01 AM, Jared M. Spool wrote: > > > >> (Personally, I believe when personas are not built on objective > >> research, they aren't personas -- they are something else. However, I > >> got flack for this idea when I posted it here: http://tinyurl.com/ > >> yuzaak ) > > > > > > 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 ________________________________________________________________ *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
