On Mar 9, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Dan Saffer wrote:
"The greatest pitfall with personas is that most of them focus on the wrong things. Differences between personas are often chosen based on demographics and preferences, not the things that really matter, like goals, motivations, and behaviors."
I'll agree with much of what Dan has cited in his article, but have to comment that most of these issues are the result of poor craftmanship and lack of rigor in crafting personas, not in the method themselves.
We still lack good methodology and educational practice when it comes to creating personas. And no, the Personas Lifecycle book didn't really help. See more info http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-design-research-personas
Personas should be based on behaviors and activities, not demographics. And they need to be data-driven, not based on assumptions and pulled out of thin air.
Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [email protected] AIM: [email protected] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com Twitter: zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ 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
