"what's an extra day or two to develop some personas" If you're not doing traditional waterfall development, that's a heck of a lot of time. Also, if you're working more than 1 project at a time and can't focus all your energy on synthesizing tons of fieldwork data into a persona, it **might** take even longer.
"They are a way to keep the team continually grounded and focused to prevent scope creep." So is good old fashioned face to face communication and relationship building with engineers, stakeholders, execs, etc. Just playing Devils advocate. I know that's not always possible. "Once again, that just goes to show that we need more education on how to create and properly use personas. Used properly, they are one of our most useful tools. But like any other tool, used incorrectly, or not at all, well, we all know what happens then. Bad data in bad data out." Please don't stick me over in the corner with the persona dunce hat on. I've created personas the right way in the past (and I commented on my disappointment that folks out there are documenting their subjective opinions and calling them personas earlier in this thread) and have used them in the all the ways you and Jared suggest. I think they are very good tools, but not always, that's where I disagree with you guys. The original topic of this thread is "when are personas not useful?". Based on my experience, there are times when they are not the best tool for the job. The same results continued to be mentioned in this thread can be achieved by other means. Sometimes those other means make more sense on a particular project than a persona. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Thanks for continuing the discussion, I think it's one of the best I've participated in since joinig IxDA! Jeff On Nov 27, 2007 8:41 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jared already gave a pretty in-depth and accurate response. So, I'll simply > add a short response based on some additional experience. > > > On Nov 27, 2007, at 1:16 AM, Jeff White wrote: > > The difference is that there are some situations in which personas in > general are not feasible or realistic, but a time/resource drain on a > project, and thus are not useful. So even if you had a well crafted persona, > it's not adding any value and might actually hurt the project. > > Bullocks. Personas don't take that much time to develop once you have the > data. And since you're going to collect data anyway, or you should be, then > what's an extra day or two to develop some personsa? And conversely, they > end up saving a lot more time in the end, by making your designs more > accurate the first time out, taking less time in the end by reducing the > amount of rework. So, the notion that they are a drain is simply not true. > > In my experience, they save 2-3 times or more the amount of time and effort > they take to create. We've literally seen taking 2-3 days to create the > personas from the data save us months on a project development time. They > are a way to keep the team continually grounded and focused to prevent scope > creep. > > Also - unless there is a large design team which is separate from research > staff, personas might not provide any extra value to those doing research + > design. Chances are they'll acquire any knowledge > from ethnography that a persona might provide and don't need the "report > format" of a persona to refer to during design. > > There are a number of other key people that personas are useful for. Right > now, we've got a client we're redesigning an internal application for. All > the users are at one site—all 30. However, the client wants us to do > personas anyway so that the executives have a better understanding of what > the customer service reps are going through in their day-to-day jobs. This > is to help them understand the value of redesigning the application. An > extra couple of days to get senior management to buy in? Sounds like a good > tradeoff. > > Oh, and btw, we tried to tell them we didn't think we needed them as all the > users are right there, but once he indicated why he wanted them, we obliged. > > > I'm sure I'm completely wrong on some semantic level of course :-) But, this > has been my experience and judging by various comments on the thread I'm not > the only one. > > Once again, that just goes to show that we need more education on how to > create and properly use personas. Used properly, they are one of our most > useful tools. But like any other tool, used incorrectly, or not at all, > well, we all know what happens then. Bad data in bad data out. > > > > 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
