Steve's point is on the nose: "Fictitious" could mean "was created, imagined" or "based on a lie". "Representative" means "to serve as an example" or "to act on behalf of". Much less consternation there.
Minus the XXXX XXX's, the discussion is fairly a healthy one. Keep it going. Frank's study was a good start at empirically investigating the efficacy of personas, and it's great for Jared to highlight it for us. Yet I think a number of Robert H's concerns about it are valid. Frank's reply helped address them, but didn't render them moot. (To be fair, some concerns will never be moot, as we're dealing with humans on both sides of the study.) So as Jared pointed out... we can do more research. Use Frank's study as a springboard. Bring in user testing as an evaluation method for design. Use teams comprised of "equally evaluated" designers more separated from one another, or perhaps individual designers. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." I think folks are in agreement here: A map is not a real place, and a persona is not a real person. Yet both provide understanding of the things they represent. And in many ways, a representation can help aid understanding of a real object in ways that experience with the object itself cannot. By way of being made by people, that representation is influenced by those who create them. And in that way, could be used for good or evil, to assist or %u2014intentionally or unintentionally%u2014 mislead those that use them. To ensure that the representation remains valid, it needs to be tied back the concrete things they represent. For a persona, this means back to users themselves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42315 ________________________________________________________________ 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
