Following up on Chris' comment, with which I wholeheartedly agree, I've had some success with the following (assuming that you've conducted and recorded your research): 1. require all attendees to watch or listen to at least 1/3 of your interviews (or they'll be skewed) 2. have them note key takeaways 3. bring their key takeaways, along with your probably more fastidious notes about goals, motivations and behaviors for each interviewee to the workshop (also bring transcripts or detailed notes) 4. chart the key takeaways against one another with sticky notes on white boards or giant stickies (so you'll create scales for sets of related takeaways, like married or single, loves technology or hates it, only probably more complicated than these examples) 5. fill in points for each interview against each scale where you have information 6. add your own scale and info too 7. look at these for patterns, those patterns resolve into skeletal personas 8. give them a few details, like name and gender 9. ask them to prioritize those (probably this is something only they can do, you can't except to make recommendations)
Then you'll have prioritized skeletal personas that you can take away and apply any additional diligent review or analysis, and fill in all the details (which will need reviewed and revised of course) and document them. I really like "The User is Always Right" by Steve Mulder with Ziv Yaar, which has some specific and concrete analytical methods that might give you some other ideas. (http://www.practicalpersonas.com/) Two key rules of thumb: You need to keep participants limited or it will get out of hand. Requiring that they watch more interviews is a way to help with that. And you have to stay on your toes and not expect things to go exactly according to script, because they assuredly won't. If you're not comfortable with that and don't have a pretty solid background and alternative ideas, you could end up painted into a corner with no way out in front of a room full of clients. It's not easy. Good luck! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46648 ________________________________________________________________ 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
