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This is not necessarily the case and makes light of an entire field. Often times personas are developed by ethnographers, human centered designers, design resea
by tlow 8y ago
This is not necessarily the case and makes light of an entire field.
Often times personas are developed by ethnographers, human centered designers, design researchers and are based upon actual users or prospective users.
Furthermore, data analytics can be used to generate personas. Personas can be representative of key forks in behavior patterns or beliefs and are a useful tool when making design and product decisions.
As written your comment seems to write off all of this based upon your claim that "only a real person" can give you insight. While the reality is that personas are based upon user insights and are often distillations thereof.
- tomrod 8y agoRight. It's using demographics to predict product adoption, service sign up, etc. This is finding the best-fit stereotypes.
- tobr 8y agoI’m aware that personas are often based upon insights from real people, but I question the value of repackaging the insights as a new, made up person. It introduces distractions and invites stereotypes. Just use real quotes and observations, statistics if it makes sense, and focus on describing typical or recurring situations or behaviors that are relevant to what you’re using the research for. A hair color or favorite snack isn’t going to be helpful.
- theoh 8y agoWhat about a disability, though?
- sizzle 8y ago"A hair color or favorite snack isn’t going to be helpful." It's about humanizing the product design process, don't pay any mind to extraneous information like hair color etc. At the end of the day, personas should be representative of the people you are developing products for and that's inherently valuable to the product development process and all the people involved who don't have a chance to be in front of users and get a feel for their needs, which determine how successful your product will be when they are aligned with what you are coding.
- tlow 8y ago"Just use real quotes and observations" Again, it seems you have a strong baseless bias against user centered design practices. You argue against a strawman of your creation.