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UI design is not the same as UX design, important difference and potentially a source of misunderstanding. If you are at the point that you know that a page wit

UI design is not the same as UX design, important difference and potentially a source of misunderstanding. If you are at the point that you know that a page with a certain purpose needs to be made, then the UI is often not that hard to design and you can make use of best practices, a/b testing, etc. But for UX design, you also need to figure out the "clear concept of the tasks to be done". Taking the perspective of the persona helps you define the list of tasks to be done. If a hammer is needed, a screwdriver or a phone (to call someone who can build things). All people in the creation process have an idea about who that user is and what their needs are, by making it explicit you make sure you are all on the same page building the same thing.

juliushuijnk 9y ago
To add a metaphor; when you design a class, you could say 'all i need is to know the purpose of the class, the API is enough'. But how would you define the API if you don't have a deep understanding of what the higher level purpose is of the class? The architecture used, related classes, etc. Perhaps the class you want to work doesn't actually needs to be built at all because it will be never called! Same goes with UX, it's first about the knowing the purpose of the program, architecture, the content, how it's related, etc, then you try to define the classes ('pages') and their API's ('what needs to be done on the page'). Once you know that, often the class ('the UI') is probably easy to build. But you'll probably make a better class if you understand why it exists in the first place.
- toss1 9y ago
  Agree that this is a higher level of design abstraction. Yet, I still do not think that it is a high enough level of abstraction for a Persona to be useful (you need to get out to marketing, if they're ever useful). Even at the 'What classes/pages/workflows do I need' stage, what you really need is living users who are domain experts who will actually use the tool to identify both the tasks and the ways they might best be accomplished. There's a reason that many of the best products are designed by someone who was building them for themselves as Customer#1 -- they internally knew what was needed. To extend the metaphor a bit - you're trying to design an improved hammer, but how helpful would it be to consider the "Joe Carpenter" Persona and what he'd want, vs talking to a bunch of live carpenters and finding that they really have good hammers, but actually need better nail-pullers? The persona will get you nowhere, but the actual carpenters will get you a new market and product that sells.
  - juliushuijnk 9y ago
    The best persona's are based on interviewing real people, and I totally agree that you need to keep doing those interviews to validate your design and when the site/app/whatever is live. it's not always possible to be your own target audience, for instance every time you design something for someone who doesn't care about how technology works :). To add/stretch the metaphor; I get why (big investments in) personas can feel like a waste of time, in the same way that you can waste a lot of time on software architecture. It only makes sense if the team is going to use it. And even then for simple projects it may be fair to say that common sense is good enough. Still it can't hurt to invest 20 minutes in talking about the architecture/personas just to be sure we're all somewhat on the same page.
    - toss1 9y ago
      Of course it's not possible to always be your own target audience, just an ideal example. Yet your counterexample is also interesting. I'd say that you need the best domain expert to design something for someone who doesn't care how tech works. Obviously, this expert canNOT be one of those myopic tech-centered geeks, but the essence of designing for non-tech users is to understand the tasks & goals at a very deep level so that you can effectively simplify the UI & process. I'm all over architecture, as that can really simplify the dev, maint, upgrade, sysadmin, & running processes. But it'll take a lot more than these examples to convince me that personas are useful for development. I could be convinced that Personas are useful for marketing, but that's because I don't know that much about marketing ;-)
      - juliushuijnk 9y ago
        So you get that best domain expert in the room with (part) of the team and then the team needs to document the knowledge it has learned, to make it easy to reason and discuss design choices for when the domain expert is not around.. "I could be convinced that Personas are useful for marketing, but that's because I don't know that much about marketing ;-)" I guess the marketing people are right then. Everything is marketing :)

juliushuijnk 9y ago

To add a metaphor; when you design a class, you could say 'all i need is to know the purpose of the class, the API is enough'. But how would you define the API if you don't have a deep understanding of what the higher level purpose is of the class? The architecture used, related classes, etc. Perhaps the class you want to work doesn't actually needs to be built at all because it will be never called! Same goes with UX, it's first about the knowing the purpose of the program, architecture, the content, how it's related, etc, then you try to define the classes ('pages') and their API's ('what needs to be done on the page'). Once you know that, often the class ('the UI') is probably easy to build. But you'll probably make a better class if you understand why it exists in the first place.

toss1 9y ago
Agree that this is a higher level of design abstraction. Yet, I still do not think that it is a high enough level of abstraction for a Persona to be useful (you need to get out to marketing, if they're ever useful). Even at the 'What classes/pages/workflows do I need' stage, what you really need is living users who are domain experts who will actually use the tool to identify both the tasks and the ways they might best be accomplished. There's a reason that many of the best products are designed by someone who was building them for themselves as Customer#1 -- they internally knew what was needed. To extend the metaphor a bit - you're trying to design an improved hammer, but how helpful would it be to consider the "Joe Carpenter" Persona and what he'd want, vs talking to a bunch of live carpenters and finding that they really have good hammers, but actually need better nail-pullers? The persona will get you nowhere, but the actual carpenters will get you a new market and product that sells.
- juliushuijnk 9y ago
  The best persona's are based on interviewing real people, and I totally agree that you need to keep doing those interviews to validate your design and when the site/app/whatever is live. it's not always possible to be your own target audience, for instance every time you design something for someone who doesn't care about how technology works :). To add/stretch the metaphor; I get why (big investments in) personas can feel like a waste of time, in the same way that you can waste a lot of time on software architecture. It only makes sense if the team is going to use it. And even then for simple projects it may be fair to say that common sense is good enough. Still it can't hurt to invest 20 minutes in talking about the architecture/personas just to be sure we're all somewhat on the same page.
  - toss1 9y ago
    Of course it's not possible to always be your own target audience, just an ideal example. Yet your counterexample is also interesting. I'd say that you need the best domain expert to design something for someone who doesn't care how tech works. Obviously, this expert canNOT be one of those myopic tech-centered geeks, but the essence of designing for non-tech users is to understand the tasks & goals at a very deep level so that you can effectively simplify the UI & process. I'm all over architecture, as that can really simplify the dev, maint, upgrade, sysadmin, & running processes. But it'll take a lot more than these examples to convince me that personas are useful for development. I could be convinced that Personas are useful for marketing, but that's because I don't know that much about marketing ;-)
    - juliushuijnk 9y ago
      So you get that best domain expert in the room with (part) of the team and then the team needs to document the knowledge it has learned, to make it easy to reason and discuss design choices for when the domain expert is not around.. "I could be convinced that Personas are useful for marketing, but that's because I don't know that much about marketing ;-)" I guess the marketing people are right then. Everything is marketing :)