>From Dan's article... "The best personas are really conceptual models, which help you to digest the user research in a coherent way. They put a name and face to an observed pattern of behavior."
I'm working with a few startups, and the hardest question for them to answer other than how they are going to make money is who is their target audience. Some of the have money, most of them, not a lot, so they don't have a lot of resources to do proper research. Or their product doesn't have quite a match in the marketplace, or they are doing something relatively new. Even if they are made up, I do think they have some value, because 1) they represent a person instead of an abstract concept, and 2) you can attach features to a person, and ask, "would this person really use this feature in this way? Is this feature that important?" The truth is they are used more by UX people for clarity than the clients, so that's why they are looked as unnecessary. The marketplace eventually determines who the target market is (the Honda Element comes to mind -- Honda thought it would be hipsters, and now older demographics buy it in larger numbers), so even well researched personas can be wrong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39645 ________________________________________________________________ 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
