Comments on Taking the "You" Out of User: My Experience Using Personas

jsokohl — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:55 GMT

I’m curious…three years later, how do you feel about using personas? What about the folks who responded back in ‘02—have you changed methods?

Carson Reynolds — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:59 GMT

It is good to see the notion of the persona being employed in interface design practice. The following paper might be relevant to folks interested in one way personas were conceived as part of an interface architecture:

“A Critical Examination of Separable User Interface Management Systems: Constructs for Individualization”

http://www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1997.3/reynolds.html

Christina — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:55 GMT

If only every one did: it’s as rare as “common” sense.

Ron Curly — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:55 GMT

Meg has a firm grasp of the obvious.

billy pooper — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:54 GMT

it wasn’t till reading this piece that i had my epiphiny. i thought to myself, “Hey, I am a persona!!!” I am now content with my own identity. Thanks meg.

David Gammel — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:54 GMT

Damon puts that well. That’s the link that I thought had to be there. It seems that personas must be driven by demographic data of your market if they are going to be relevant tools as opposed to the designers ideal users who may or may not exist in enough numbers to keep you in business.

Damon van Vessem — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:54 GMT

Very interesting thread. I found this sentence from the above mentioned ‘Cooper newsletter’ insightful:

“Personas are a set of fictional, representative user archetypes based on the behaviors, attitudes, and goals of the people we interview in our research phase.”

So even though standard marketing demographic data plays no major role in creating realistic personas, there _is_ a justification of the validity of the personas in the user research (mostly interviews) that’s being done beforehand. It’s not just based on designers’ assumptions. I think this is an important aspect that often gets left out when discussing the use of personas. For me anyway, it took away some scepsis about the method…

Dell — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:54 GMT

Great article. I’m developing personas with my internal Web team for the first time, and I have two questions: If your marketing dept. has already developed personas actually used in print materials (e.g., Mrs. Smith just luvs our product and here’s why she bought it and *how she’s using it*), do you all recommend bringing the same personas to life for user centered Web design purposes, or starting over with new ones, so as not to confuse the two? I’m torn.

Secondly, how often do you “update” personas, for example, when a new product is developed or a new customer comes along with a different type of user base, such as an older population? Is it ok to constantly update or change your personas or should they be relatively permanent?

John Dunning — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:40:09 GMT

David Gammel asks an interesting question about quantitative demographic data vs. personas. It’s a question we get asked a lot here at Cooper.

As it happens, the February Cooper newsletter contained an article by Elaine Brechin about this very topic. Here’s a quote:

“Personas and market segments provide different kinds of information. Market segmentation provides a quantitative breakdown of the market, while personas provide a qualitative analysis of user behavior. “

The rest of the article can be viewed at http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2002_02/reconciling_mar…

Roy Neal — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:06:08 GMT

We use personas and scenario-based design religiously in our organization.

To piggy-back on Steve’s post above, we’ve found that details about a persona—car they drive, age, number of kids—plays a larger role than making a user real or identifying to what demographic a persona may map.

The details of a persona may illuminate the most subtle, yet important thing about a user——user motivation. Motivation can be heavily influenced by environment. This is where personas go and use cases fear to tread.

In the same way that we remind ourselves that users are not designers and we are not the target users, we should remind ourselves that the user will tell us how much detail is enough for a persona.

Without a deep understanding of a user’s enviornment and how they work within it, a persona (and a usability expert) can miss key motivators to user behavior.
For example, a mom with 2 kids and a Dodge Caravan. How might she be different from another Mom persona in which we don’t know that info?

The Mom with kids persona leads a hectic lifestyle. Her free time is fleeting. Her kids are always into something. She must keep one eye on them even when they are napping.

She is usually in a hurry and will not have time for sites that require a large time investment. Her goals are practical (perhaps the motivation behind the minivan) and speed-based.
Her world is much more real and important to her than any “domain” we create.

This info can help describe a personal goal—”I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time.”

That could have big design implications and help you decide what functions to keep and what to discard.

For example, it may be nice to have that nifty ESP search function. What better way to improve search results? Surely the users will see value in that.
But it takes nearly 5 full minutes to read your mind. So, this Mom (a high-priority user) would grow impatient with it—she can’t imagine sitting still that long.
The ESP search tool should not be included (even if it is cool) because it is too slow.
But this also opens a new opportunity—how can we reduce the ESP search tool’s search time so it provides real value for our target users?

Understanding motivations and influencers is key to good personas. How much (or few) details to include depends on when the details stop adding value and no longer matter.

Peter Fraterdeus — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:40:10 GMT

>>Any time the word “user” was mentioned, questions flew: “What user? Who is she and what’s she trying to do?” Our work with personas increased our awareness of our audience and their varying skill levels and goals when using the application.

subzero — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:53 GMT

One think that helped me (I think) understand how other people think and foresee potential obstacles, was the fact that early in my career, I thought computer applications.

So many things that seemed apparent to me, were no so for the students. User testing experiences I had were similar.

I believe it is good practice to test and use personas until you develop that way of thinking. And even when you do —testing does not hurt. That does not mean that you have to user test every little assumption you make —If you do not develop some level of instinct over time, you’re in the wrong profession.

Also, there is a lot of ‘usability’ data that accumulated over hundreds of years —typography, color theory, perception, etc—As they say —those who do not learn from history…

Bill Seitz — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:53 GMT

GeoffreyMoore takes a similar approach in talking about “scenarios” and “target-customer characterizations” in CrossingTheChasm (p93 in my paperback)

Steve Mulder — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:53 GMT

When I use personas, they’re always based on user goals or intentions: What is each persona coming to the site to *do*? (We think in verbs when doing this.) Goal-defined personas lead naturally into prioritizing features and describing appropriate interactions. Demographic and psychographic info is helpful as an additional layer of detail and realism on top of these fundamental goals. It’s not essential to understand that Harriet the Home Seeker has 2-year-old twin girls and drives a Dodge Caravan, but it does make Harriet more real in the minds of the project team.

David Gammel — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:53 GMT

How important is the use of demographic data in creating personas for a design project?