jared... you certainly make a great point on roleply vs personas.... I suppose I made my oversimplified statement assuming the designer has actually met and observed at least a few possible users. I forgot that even that element was in question in this thread. I agree that distinction is important! And I'm all for term-policing in this case. UX practitioners are long overdue for a real consensus on what we mean by 'personas.' In my view, the essential elements are primary experience of real, intended users, and an effort to internalize what youve learned (imagine what it will be like for such people to use your design). That primary experience could be very informal, or enhanced through some intentional method. I dont really believe you can even do roleplay in a total vacuum... you're still basing it on something. So to me, roleplay without real experience of the original person(s) is just going to be sloppy roleplay. But maybe youre meaning some specific kind of roleplay I'm not familiar with. I do believe that some intentional process is useful to doing this well and improving chances of a favorable outcome, but that method necessarily varies for each designer or team. Of course its always possible for a very experienced/talented designer to 'wing it' and hit a home run as well. (sent from mobile on a teeny keyboard) andrew hinton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 11/28/07, Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Nov 28, 2007, at 8:50 AM, Andrew Hinton wrote: > > > The funny thing is, if you've ever imagined what it might be like to > > be your intended user trying to *use* the thing you're designing, > > you've done persona-based design. > > Again, in an attempt to not overload terms, I'd say that isn't > necessarily persona-based design. It is role playing, which is > another important design technique and not mutually exclusive with > persona-based design. > > It would be a part of persona-based design if the intended user were > using was a persona. If it's just someone you just made up in your > head, then its just role-playing. (Both are valid techniques, but > have different purposes.) > > I would also say that persona-based design has many more activities > than just role-playing. > > Sorry for being the namespace police, but I think its to our > community's advantage to have everyone using a common language. > > Jared > > Jared M. Spool > User Interface Engineering > 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 > e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 > http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks > > > -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com ________________________________________________________________ *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
