On May 29, 2009, at 11:31 AM, Robert Reimann wrote:
Personas suffer (in some circles) from the erroneous perception that
they
are based on substantially (or entirely) fictitious data.
This is a straw man argument, and one that you are indirectly
referencing
and lending credence to.
I disagree that there's an erroneous perception out there. Personas
suffer from two things in my experience:
1) There are too many people who *do* make up information -- in part
or in whole -- when they write them, then use that document as a
justification for opinion based or highly subjective decisions, which
basically does double damage to the design process and the end
product. I've seen it firsthand too many times to count, and I still
see it happening all of the time.
2) There are too many people use personas as a replacement for being
involved in the research itself. In reading Henry Dreyfuss and
listening to some of the core proponents of people who clarify what
personas are all about on this list, it is clear that the act of being
involved in the research is the point, not the documenting of said
research.
In my personal design processes, I always tend to do what Dreyfuss
writes about in Designing for People. I go into the field and watch
people do things, ask lots of questions, listen a lot, take notes, and
I often do what they do myself to get a sense of the problem without
any filters. I've done this my entire career so far and everywhere
I've been as much as I can. My poor reactions to personas in the past
are because of the two things I mention above, but had I met someone
back in 1992 who actually explained to me that personas are about
hard, functional data and research, and that the collection and
observation of that research is really what personas were all about,
that the document is basically shorthand for remembering the research
activity, I'd have never resisted personas in the first place.
It is because of items #1 and #2 that I still to this day refuse to
engage in personas as a design process voluntarily. I'm fine with my
own data collection and note taking methods, thank you very much.
Can personas be saved? Sure. But there's a lot of damage that has to
repaired and people in this field need to take more responsibility for
the processes they unleash into the hands of people who aren't trained
or simply don't know what they are doing.
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. [email protected]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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