The general rule in my book is interviewing and observing friends and family is better than nothing.
What you describe is a scenario of what I like to refer to as "How right do you want it?" with regards to your persona development. Think of the answer to that question as a spectrum, where using your gut feeling is on the low end. However, with that said it is better than nothing. At the very least you are putting yourself in the users shoes and thinking like them. This also gives you an oppurtunity for trying to convince the higher ups that doing the user interviews is worth it. Then, the answer for "How right do you want it?" is on their shoulders and not yours. I had to do this in the past where I actually needed to produce some conceptual layout and design with zero previous user research and limited client fed information. Lucky, the user population I was focusing on were health related users, so there existed a lot of previous research on the web I was able to draw upon. Mentally becoming a 45 year old woman with breast cancer was quite a trip. To your survey option, I would say that the results from the survey would allow you to make fairly valid user profiles, but not personas. But, again it's better than do nothing at all. Hope this helps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25969 ________________________________________________________________ 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
