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Important to differentiate between personas as archetypes and those based on stereotypes. The difference? Solid, hard-yards user research that comes from a larg

Important to differentiate between personas as archetypes and those based on stereotypes. The difference? Solid, hard-yards user research that comes from a large enough sample set.

virgilp 9y ago
That's my understanding too. The useful way to do a persona is: 1. Find a (real!) user of your product, that you believe to be more-or-less an "archetype" of a class of similar users 2. Start writing down his(her) workflows/ how (s)he uses your app/what (s)he's trying to achieve, etc. AFAIK my company is even preserving the real first name of the "persona". If we're talking about real people, then it makes sense to use their behaviors/needs to guide the design of the product. If we're talking about imaginary people... well, you're just optimizing your product for some imaginary user :)
dhimes 9y ago
This seems like the right answer- I wish it was higher in the thread. Do you have a reliable reference? As I said in another thread I'd really like to see examples of insights that were arrived at due to the use of personas- at least where personas made getting that insight more efficient.
- gav 9y ago
  One of my favorite examples of where personas really helped was driving both strategy and design for a wholesaler. Through research, one of the personas that fell out was "man with a van", that is a sole proprietor who did most of their work out of their van. Two key insights were: 1) The median age was higher, being in the 50s they were starting to thinking about the retirement and handing over the business. Even if they had little interest in engaging with digital, their protégé would, and ignoring digital would mean losing market share in the future. 2) They were on the road a lot, and mobile-based experiences would be helpful over having to call/fax orders, bills, etc. However research showed that their biggest complaint was the small size of UI elements for both reading, and more importantly clicking on (lots of complaints about how hard mobile website were to use with fat fingers). I hope this was useful; I find well developed personas useful to keep in mind the disparate users of a system, what they are trying to achieve, and how. There was a comment about validating personas as part of user stories, which I'd recommend.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    That is a useful anecdote- thank you. Just to be sure I unerstand: You had an intended customer base who used a mobile office of sorts, and by exploring the persona you could drill down and discover certain usability issues as well as a future to bear in mind. The persona exercise helped make this clear. Something like this, fleshed out with more detail, would have been great to include in the original article. It shows how personas can be a useful framework for exploring potential markets (or niches, maybe).
    - gav 9y ago
      Just to clarify, the intended customer base was made up of various types of customers over different axes: big companies, small business, people that work in purchasing, people that recommend products, and so on. It's useful, to me at least, to come up with personas that are based on clusters of customers (based on research) so that every design choice can be validated against the impact to them. Each persona may have a different goal or priority. The other use is when thinking of scenarios for personalization, what data can be used to segment customers? It might be useful to have a dashboard on the homepage showing the status of POs and bills for somebody in purchasing vs. showing previous items ordered to facilitate reordering for somebody else.
superhuzza 9y ago
"Solid, hard-yards user research that comes from a large enough sample set" Unfortunately, not so simple in my experience. That's a lot of time and money many companies can't or will not fork over. So, shortcuts and approximations are used as an alternative.
- adrian_mrd 9y ago
  Agree, unfortunately that is the tricky aspect: evaluating the cost/benefit of undertaking user research (with personas as one aspect, along with diary studies, interviews, observational studies et al - depending upon the nature of the tasks/problem to solve. What definitely costs companies a huge amount of time and money is launching new products or concepts into markets - especially without some form of pre-qualification i.e. is there a need? does this solve a problem? will customers actually pay for this service? etc. As the old user experience adage goes: "spend $1 on usability and save $100* down-the-track". * made up numbers :)
gwbas1c 9y ago
Exactly! I find that a lot of people like to sit down and play "let's pretend" instead of doing real work. Personas come across as an easy way to get sidetracked by a game of "let's pretend." That's when personas are just stereotypes.
- adrian_mrd 9y ago
  Very true. "Let's pretend" is a fun game, but it's no substitute for real, rolled gold user research :)

Important to differentiate between personas as archetypes and those based on stereotypes. The difference? Solid, hard-yards user research that comes from a large enough sample set.

virgilp 9y ago

That's my understanding too. The useful way to do a persona is: 1. Find a (real!) user of your product, that you believe to be more-or-less an "archetype" of a class of similar users 2. Start writing down his(her) workflows/ how (s)he uses your app/what (s)he's trying to achieve, etc. AFAIK my company is even preserving the real first name of the "persona". If we're talking about real people, then it makes sense to use their behaviors/needs to guide the design of the product. If we're talking about imaginary people... well, you're just optimizing your product for some imaginary user :)

dhimes 9y ago

This seems like the right answer- I wish it was higher in the thread. Do you have a reliable reference? As I said in another thread I'd really like to see examples of insights that were arrived at due to the use of personas- at least where personas made getting that insight more efficient.

gav 9y ago
One of my favorite examples of where personas really helped was driving both strategy and design for a wholesaler. Through research, one of the personas that fell out was "man with a van", that is a sole proprietor who did most of their work out of their van. Two key insights were: 1) The median age was higher, being in the 50s they were starting to thinking about the retirement and handing over the business. Even if they had little interest in engaging with digital, their protégé would, and ignoring digital would mean losing market share in the future. 2) They were on the road a lot, and mobile-based experiences would be helpful over having to call/fax orders, bills, etc. However research showed that their biggest complaint was the small size of UI elements for both reading, and more importantly clicking on (lots of complaints about how hard mobile website were to use with fat fingers). I hope this was useful; I find well developed personas useful to keep in mind the disparate users of a system, what they are trying to achieve, and how. There was a comment about validating personas as part of user stories, which I'd recommend.
- dhimes 9y ago
  That is a useful anecdote- thank you. Just to be sure I unerstand: You had an intended customer base who used a mobile office of sorts, and by exploring the persona you could drill down and discover certain usability issues as well as a future to bear in mind. The persona exercise helped make this clear. Something like this, fleshed out with more detail, would have been great to include in the original article. It shows how personas can be a useful framework for exploring potential markets (or niches, maybe).
  - gav 9y ago
    Just to clarify, the intended customer base was made up of various types of customers over different axes: big companies, small business, people that work in purchasing, people that recommend products, and so on. It's useful, to me at least, to come up with personas that are based on clusters of customers (based on research) so that every design choice can be validated against the impact to them. Each persona may have a different goal or priority. The other use is when thinking of scenarios for personalization, what data can be used to segment customers? It might be useful to have a dashboard on the homepage showing the status of POs and bills for somebody in purchasing vs. showing previous items ordered to facilitate reordering for somebody else.

superhuzza 9y ago

"Solid, hard-yards user research that comes from a large enough sample set" Unfortunately, not so simple in my experience. That's a lot of time and money many companies can't or will not fork over. So, shortcuts and approximations are used as an alternative.

adrian_mrd 9y ago
Agree, unfortunately that is the tricky aspect: evaluating the cost/benefit of undertaking user research (with personas as one aspect, along with diary studies, interviews, observational studies et al - depending upon the nature of the tasks/problem to solve. What definitely costs companies a huge amount of time and money is launching new products or concepts into markets - especially without some form of pre-qualification i.e. is there a need? does this solve a problem? will customers actually pay for this service? etc. As the old user experience adage goes: "spend $1 on usability and save $100* down-the-track". * made up numbers :)

gwbas1c 9y ago

Exactly! I find that a lot of people like to sit down and play "let's pretend" instead of doing real work. Personas come across as an easy way to get sidetracked by a game of "let's pretend." That's when personas are just stereotypes.

adrian_mrd 9y ago
Very true. "Let's pretend" is a fun game, but it's no substitute for real, rolled gold user research :)