Thanks for your thorough response. Responses below ... But seriously, the research did not use heuristics to evaluate the > effectiveness of personas. I used heuristics to evaluate the > usability of the resulting designs %u2013 allowing me to compare all > of the diverse design solutions consistently with each other.
But that's exactly my point. You used a heuristic evaluation, which is a measurement for usability. Personas have nothing to do with designing usable applications. The brief stated that > the user-friendliness of the product was of paramount importance > %u2013 especially the set-up task as this was seen as a barrier to > product sales. How is this something that can be helped through the use of personas? This is a usability issue, plain and simple. > The market research outlined the user profile and the > personas were created from this same user profile. > The image boards were given to the control group covered 3 areas, > Product environment, lifestyle and brand landscape. None of these things have an affect on designing a usable setup process, which is what you measured with your heuristic evaluation. Image boards can't tell you anything about how people might perform the tasks supported in the application. I really don't get this. You're evaluating apples by looking at oranges. If I'm just missing your point, please elaborate. The conclusions of the study find that using personas is an effective > tool and did produce more user-focused solutions. Personas are a strategic tool. Heuristics are a usability measurement tool. Even the most masterful persona-driven strategy can end with a design with a low level of usability. And clearly, applications can have an incredibly high degree of usability when no personas are used whatsoever. Please tell me you see that. This study's results show that the two groups that used personas also happened to create more usable applications. The results do not explicitly show that personas caused increase usability, or even that it's possible for personas to do so. And to address Jared's argument — yes, I understand that this is but a small sliver of a complete argument that proves the value of persona usage, but the way it the paper is written, it seems to attempt to claim proof of quite a bit. It also acknowledges > that personas are only one of many design tools %u2013 and does not > claim that it is the most effective method. As the saying > goes%u2026there is more than one way to skin a cat, or to make a duck > happy. > But in the study, no research materials were provided to the control group that could reasonably be considered comparable to personas. Personas are the result of researching the people who will use an application. The image boards, as you said yourself, were the result of looking at the "product environment, lifestyle and brand landscape". Those things aren't people. The control group's materials don't compare. I really don't mean to knock your work here — seriously, kudos for the effort to prove out something so hotly disputed — but there are just too many issues here to draw any valuable conclusions. -r- ________________________________________________________________ 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
