Following up on Peter's note, I think that part of the persona planning process is to develop a "Public Relations" or "Advertising Plan" for your personas. That should be an explicit part of the persona process. This could mean that:
1. Personas are displayed in the work area 2. Personas are required in deliverables 3. The persona team is expected to promote the user of personas by actually referring to them in all meetings. 4. The data behind personas is highlighted occassionally in senior management messages 5. Methods used to evaluate products used persona-based methods. There are many ways to publicize personas and I've seen really good work, based on solid data, that is wasted because there was not a solid plan to make people aware of the personas and kept them in mind throughout design and development. Chauncey On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Peter Merholz <[email protected]> wrote: > I just wrote about field research and personas for HarvardBusiness.org > > http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/merholz/2009/03/the-best-way-to-understand-you.html > > The heart of my message there is that the best way to understand your > customers is to Go To Them. > > The follow on is that not everyone in a company can Go To Them, and we need > means by which field research findings and insights can be shared. Video > highlight reels are very powerful, but, I think, insufficient. > > In my experience, a well-crafted persona, and placing that persona in some > strong scenarios, is the single best tool we have to spread empathy > throughout an organization. It probably shouldn't be the only tool, but if > you have time for just one, and you want to help your colleagues achieve a > visceral understanding of your customers, I don't know of a better tool than > personas. > > --peter > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > ________________________________________________________________ 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
