Personas - I’ve seen the light!
When I first started working in user-centered design in 2003, one method that I had a really hard time seeing the value of was the creation, maintenance and regular use of personas. After nearly 4 years, I believe I have finally seen the light.
My eyes began to be opened in November of 2006 when a client project I was working on required me to review some personas which were created prior ot my joining the project. The goal in reviewing the personas was to identify the primary target audience for a new online multimedia studio.
As I reviewed the personas I began to quickly see who would be most likely to engage in this type of tool. I also saw quite clearly which persona would not engage the tool at all. Based on this research I made my recommendations to the project team and we began designing the site that would advertise the tool. During the design phase the client was very uncomfortable limiting the focus of the site to one primary and 1 secondary persona as this approach seemed it might lead to certain personas feeling left out.
The team and I acquiesced and began efforts to design the site geared toward 4 total personas (out of cast of 6). However, while moving forward with our new target, our efforts produced (in my opinion) a very un-engaging user experience. As fate would have it, the client scrapped the project so our site never came to fruition.
This experience left me with the first of many positive persona experiences. I found that I really had a clearer vision of what would and would not work with the site because I felt like I understood who would be using it. It wasn’t until just this past week that I realized why our design efforts went so far south.
In reading chapter 5 of “About Face 2.0 – The Essentials of User Interface Design” the authors (Cooper & Reimann) helped me realize that in trying to design for more than a single primary persona and 1-2 secondary personas, we were effectively “…trying to accomplish too much” (pg 72).
This insight, along with several others contained in the book, have convinced me to become a stronger advocate for the creation, maintenance, and incorporation of personas in future projects.
posted by matthewjdoty @ 4/14/2007 02:39:00 PM
4 Comments:
The first and most important process is user research which can help in persona creation..also personas combined with scenarios make a great combination.
The first and most important process is user research which can help in persona creation..also personas combined with scenarios make a great combination.
Wow, thanks for sharing your experience with personas. In every HCI class I have had, there is always a debate questioning whether personas are useful. Sometimes it seems like people use the persona method because it has been said that it is a good thing to do...you know, without much reasoning for it.
I have never actually worked in the field. All of my learning has come through class projects. Therefore, when I think of personas, I think of me creating them while knowing what the project is about. I never really thought about joining an already established project and learning about the target audience through a persona someone else created. I can definitely see how a persona would be incredibly useful.
Through your situation, I also see that using too many will cause an overload and impractical situation to go forth with the project. I guess simply using personas is not enough- one has to know how to use them effectively.
Good post Matthew. I totally agree that personas can be useful in creating a very specific type of design.
I've always created my own personas for work projects and never been given one. To me, working from an existing persona sounds a bit more dangerous since you are relying solely on the fact that it is accurate to begin with.
I would hope that random error of target audience samples and client biases had been reduced as much as possible before creating it. Better yet, I would try to persuade my client to have a new persona created based on new research. I realize this isn't always possible.
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