My experience is that 9 out of 10 times, people make personas
improperly, and worse, use them to make or justify whatever design
decision suits their fancy that day. But nearly every single person
I've seen use them *thinks* they are doing it right.
Their using the hammer wrong. Don't blame the hammer. ;)
About Personas (and everything else):
I think of the mistakes we make generally in the UX community is that
we think we're inventing everything for the first time. We aren't, and
we shouldn't.
There are a lot of tools (like Market Research, used by advertising
agencies) that have similar roles in software development. http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/1287-1.html
, for example. Nothing against Alan Cooper, but a lot of the
information in a typical persona is the same as customer profiling. I
saw a lot of this during direct mail political campaign work I did
before the web, in crafting the message, and that was well before the
web.
You know, if we had standardized processes for a lot of this, it
wouldn't really be an issue. You don't know you are doing personas
wrong unless there are guidelines for doing them. The same goes for
most interaction design. Unless this happens, will get into these Mac
vs. PCs, Personas vs. No Personas arguments until the end of time.
Patrick
twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs
email: [email protected] | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com
cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346
The last UX books you'll ever need.
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