Andrew Hinton has wise things to say about what personas are and aren't in this article on Boxes & Arrows.. He reminds us that personas should not merely be an item in our methodology checklist. If they don't have a real impact on how we make decisions, they're not worth doing.

I love this bit: "Personas are not documents, and they are not the result of a step-by-step method that automagically pops out convenient facsimiles of your users. Personas are actually the designer’s focused act of empathetic imagination, grounded in first-hand user knowledge."

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

Make sure to check this out. Microsoft created personas to help their partners sway users away from Linux (!). And the way they packaged up the personas is quite impressive.

www.linuxpersonas.com

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to Kim Goodwin in her new article for Cooper, yes. Making personas compelling and memorable is important, but companies can go overboard and treat personas as an end in and of themselves, rather than as a decision-making tool.

Bonus: Hear Alan Cooper, godfather of personas, in this podcast. "Personas are not something you make, they're something you discover."

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

Zef Fugaz's "Bring Your Personas to Life" is worth a read. It's not enough to simply document our users from afar. To some degree, we must become them, live in their shoes, empathize with their struggles. It's so easy to revert to our instincts of designing for ourselves that it takes something rather odd like role-playing to jolt us into a different perspective. We are not our users, and any tool that shakes us up is a good thing.

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I went to see Stranger than Fiction, which is of course wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the scene in which Harold Crick, a fictional character, meets his author. The look on Emma Thompson's face is perfect as she beholds her creation in real life, commenting on his hair and his eyes. What was previously an abstraction is now solidly real and standing in front of her.

Sound familiar? I am sufficiently geeky that I thought about personas, of course. Unless we bring our users to life in a way that is detailed and memorable and physical, they almost always remain a distant abstraction. Find someone to role-play a persona during a meeting. Hire an actor to be a persona willing to be interviewed by the team - or better yet, pay a real customer to do so. Send email messages to the team from your personas. Find the best ways to make your users come to life, and then make them real.

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

CNN has a story on how Ford uses personas for designing its cars.

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The Library as the User Sees It" shows how personas can benefit any customer-focused business or service, including the user experience of libraries.

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a quick idea: Use your personas for Search Engine Marketing. You know your personas, and thus you know what they'll be searching for in order to satisfy their goals. Presto! Now you have the keywords to go after for paid search placement.

Posted by Steve Mulder | Permalink | Comments (0)