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OK but this is a 30 minute exercise: whom are we building this for? I've seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data

by dhimes 9y ago

OK but this is a 30 minute exercise: whom are we building this for? I've seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data about the personas: where they live, how many kids, etc. I would love to hear about a time where the persona development led to a new insight because it's a persona. Like: this person's a parent-> probably attends parent-teacher groups-> voila! needs XXXX

ci5er 9y ago
> I've seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data about the personas: where they live, how many kids, etc. What is the stated justification there?
- dhimes 9y ago
  The idea is supposedly to "get inside the heads" of the target user. This will lead presumably lead to some sort of intuition about what their needs are and how to market to them. TFA sheds no light on the unique advantages offered by detailed personas.
  - ci5er 9y ago
    Hmmm. My product has "this cluster of users" vs "that cluster of users". But we really don't attempt to imagine their home-life. Or race or sex or orientation. Just what they are into feature-set wise. EDIT: I think we call them "User-Type-A" and "User-Type-B". That doesn't sound very sexy - but it helps us prioritize feature development (esp. since "User-Type-B" never pays for anything - those features come last. But the non-paying user type is the most winge-ey - I've never figured out how that could be - but they are)
  - juliushuijnk 9y ago
    The idea is to get the user in your head as a real human being not as an abstract category. If you design for "User who needs product X" then you come up with different design than if you think about "Jim wants to buy a gift for his nephew's birthday, he is late, the birthday is tomorrow." You can better come up with ways to support Jim. You feel the importance of a speedy delivery. You can also think about new features like asking this user if he wants a suggestion mail sent to him for next year (minus two weeks), that has present suggestions for kids that are 1 year older. Now I just made that up, and it might be a terrible idea, but the point is, that you could never come up with something like that without a persona.
blowski 9y ago
When it's just abstract information, especially information that has no basis in user research, it is worthless. But I'll give an example of where I've seen this be useful. > Bob is a marketing guy. He mostly uses his mobile for calls, but doesn't have a headset. As a result, he can't type quickly while on the phone, so any UI he needs to use while on the phone should be optimised for mouse clicks or single keypresses. This came out of some actual user research and was the justification for spending time on a 'point and click' friendly UI.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Isn't this just common sense though?
  - michaelt 9y ago
    Evidently not, if it took user research to reveal it :)
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  I know it’s just an example, but does one need Bob to come to that realization? If you say you’re building for mobile, you look at the strengths and weaknesses of input on mobile devices. The biggest strength is precise finger movement. The biggest weakness is lack of tactile feedback. That leads to the same conclusion without extraneous data. I feel like personas are a way to force people to think critically about the end product. That’s not a bad thing, but just deciding to critically consider what your goal is before building something already goes a long way.
  - blowski 9y ago
    It told us that it was a priority, rather than just "something that would be nice if we get around to it".
  - skybrian 9y ago
    If you tell the programmers that people need to be able to use a desktop web app with one hand, they're going to want to know why. Are there really that many one-handed users out there? Sounds like a corner case. Personas are useful if they're backed by user research. That's how you know that yes, there really are a lot of "one-handed" users among your actual customers, and here's why. It seems like one pitfall with personas might be giving them to developers without including any of the supporting research that makes them a valuable summary.

by dhimes 9y ago

ci5er 9y ago

> I've seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data about the personas: where they live, how many kids, etc. What is the stated justification there?

dhimes 9y ago
The idea is supposedly to "get inside the heads" of the target user. This will lead presumably lead to some sort of intuition about what their needs are and how to market to them. TFA sheds no light on the unique advantages offered by detailed personas.
- ci5er 9y ago
  Hmmm. My product has "this cluster of users" vs "that cluster of users". But we really don't attempt to imagine their home-life. Or race or sex or orientation. Just what they are into feature-set wise. EDIT: I think we call them "User-Type-A" and "User-Type-B". That doesn't sound very sexy - but it helps us prioritize feature development (esp. since "User-Type-B" never pays for anything - those features come last. But the non-paying user type is the most winge-ey - I've never figured out how that could be - but they are)
- juliushuijnk 9y ago
  The idea is to get the user in your head as a real human being not as an abstract category. If you design for "User who needs product X" then you come up with different design than if you think about "Jim wants to buy a gift for his nephew's birthday, he is late, the birthday is tomorrow." You can better come up with ways to support Jim. You feel the importance of a speedy delivery. You can also think about new features like asking this user if he wants a suggestion mail sent to him for next year (minus two weeks), that has present suggestions for kids that are 1 year older. Now I just made that up, and it might be a terrible idea, but the point is, that you could never come up with something like that without a persona.

blowski 9y ago

When it's just abstract information, especially information that has no basis in user research, it is worthless. But I'll give an example of where I've seen this be useful. > Bob is a marketing guy. He mostly uses his mobile for calls, but doesn't have a headset. As a result, he can't type quickly while on the phone, so any UI he needs to use while on the phone should be optimised for mouse clicks or single keypresses. This came out of some actual user research and was the justification for spending time on a 'point and click' friendly UI.

mistermann 9y ago
Isn't this just common sense though?
- michaelt 9y ago
  Evidently not, if it took user research to reveal it :)
BoorishBears 9y ago
I know it’s just an example, but does one need Bob to come to that realization? If you say you’re building for mobile, you look at the strengths and weaknesses of input on mobile devices. The biggest strength is precise finger movement. The biggest weakness is lack of tactile feedback. That leads to the same conclusion without extraneous data. I feel like personas are a way to force people to think critically about the end product. That’s not a bad thing, but just deciding to critically consider what your goal is before building something already goes a long way.
- blowski 9y ago
  It told us that it was a priority, rather than just "something that would be nice if we get around to it".
- skybrian 9y ago
  If you tell the programmers that people need to be able to use a desktop web app with one hand, they're going to want to know why. Are there really that many one-handed users out there? Sounds like a corner case. Personas are useful if they're backed by user research. That's how you know that yes, there really are a lot of "one-handed" users among your actual customers, and here's why. It seems like one pitfall with personas might be giving them to developers without including any of the supporting research that makes them a valuable summary.