On May 29, 2009, at 3:25 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
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.
Agreed.
However...
What you're talking about are poorly executed personas. Sure, too many
persona projects produce sucky results, but if we look beyond that at
the benefits produced by the few well-executed projects, can we agree
that, when done well, this tool has merit?
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.
But, Andrei, isn't it the case that there's a lot of poorly-executed
design projects out there? Should *I* refuse to engage in design
because too many design projects end up crappy?
Can't you really make that argument about anything? (Once again, we
see Sturgeon's Law raising it's ugly head.)
I'm just thinking that we need to start focusing among the few really
well done things in our practice and stop throwing out all the babies
with our bath water.
Jared
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