Comments on Making Personas More Powerful: Details to Drive Strategic and Tactical Design

anu ramaswamy — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:34:08 GMT

Love the article! What is particularly valuable in this is the recognition that there is the stakeholder vs. user balance that is extremely challenging in internal IT. I am passionate about changing the way internal IT works, to make user centered design second nature to software development in corporate IT, and I am often frustrated with how we in the UX community seem to have given up on corporate IT. Agreed, it is an uphill climb, but, more than 50% of software is made by corporate IT, and if we ignore such a large segment of users, it means our passion for creating a better world for software users is conveniently limited to the space where it is easy to sell the need for UX…right? I hope we do a lot more to making business stakeholders understand the value of user experience in internal software.

Parth Upadhye — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:47:21 GMT

This article and the toolkit is very useful. I can’t wait to use it for my current software project. I am using the Persona approach to flesh out Stakeholder and User profiles. Thanks, this is the best document for my purposes.

nemrut — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:07 GMT

There is a lot of merit to the methodology described below. That said, why does it have to all fall under the umbrella of ‘personae?’ Most companies already see the value of the type of due diligence you describe. Does this require UX practitioners to drive this process, and in many cases, replicate what is already taking place.

IMO, the benefit of personas iare their ability to provide a somewhat brief, lucid and informed snapshot of potential users to various stakeholders and team members who would otherwise not have the time nor inclination to get involved with suzh ‘fuzzy’ research.

Gordon — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:07 GMT

Excellent!

Mike Gale — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:07 GMT

Great article George. Are there more coming?

For some personae the “demographic” (=How much can they spend) and live in an area factors have a weak correlation. For example here in New Zealand I often see evidence of different “demographic” groups living in the same street.

That issue of “I don’t want you as a customer” is very important. The man hours wasted and the payroll bloat, from not being very clear on this could push a company out of “we’re doing what we want to AND we’re making money”.

Mike Gale — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:07 GMT

“Not only did it create significant jumps in efficiency because it allows two people to do the job of one”

Interesting measure of efficiency!