A brief caution about one ugly trap of personas: Yes, they should be based on user research. But their benefit does not come solely through how a persona embodies the research. (It's a pretty lossy compression of data if you think about it.)
A major benefit comes from the effect they have in design on the designer, i.e. they get you into an intentional stance when designing. This is to avoid designing for yourself, or for some stretchy variables in a market segment, or for the technology. Getting into an intentional stance clears away all those extraneous trappings and focuses you on helping personas achieve their goals. It's much, much better to have these personas based on sound user research, so that you're not designing for the wrong expertise, expectations, contexts, or goals, but a persona still has benefit to design thinking even if you have to make that persona up on the spot. The trap to avoid then, is stressing out over the scientific-ness of either the research or the personas' relation to that research. Do a good qualitative job, and that will be enough. Longer article on Cooper's blog: http://tinyurl.com/5btgxe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35624 ________________________________________________________________ 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
