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Just like any development or UX tool, personas can be dangerous or super effective. It has nothing to do with the concept of personas, it's just how people choo

Just like any development or UX tool, personas can be dangerous or super effective. It has nothing to do with the concept of personas, it's just how people choose to research and use them. The intent isn't to design for a specific customer, it's to give the UX and development teams a common user reference point to validate their assumptions against through user interviews and continued research, iterating on the personas. I'm sure you know about Alan Cooper's books, but another that I've found helps maximize the benefit, and minimize the danger, of personas is Tamara Adlin's "The Persona Lifecycle" : http://www.amazon.com/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-Interactive-Technologies/dp/0125662513 http://www.amazon.com/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-Interacti... Plus, Microsoft isn't exactly known for it's effective UX.

rubinelli 13y ago
Yeah, personas are a good tool for refining your product once you know your market, but a startup by definition is still exploring. You can run extensive interviews and create a great set of personas today, then pivot into a completely different market and throw away all this work next week. Or create profiles based on what people say (which is different from what people do), build your product, and realize nobody cares.
- eflowers 13y ago
  Creating personas on what people say is bad UX, and not a flaw in personas. Knowing what a user behavior based interview/persona is the job of whoever is in charge of the startups UX process. I don't see how you can "know your market" without some sort of idea on who your user is, what their behaviors are, and have some sort of empathy with them. Regarding pivoting and "throwing out" the work... each discipline of a team would do that. That's your UX designers job, just like a programmer would have to throw away code or a graphic artist would throw away design collateral for the new direction. The "realize nobody cares" is exactly what good UX personas prevent. I guess if a startup doesn't know how to incorporate or conduct good UX you could run into those problems. I guess I just don't agree with your premise. You're basically describing what happens when something goes wrong with your UX and personas - so of course your argument makes sense since you're highlighting a worst case scenario. But you're neglecting to acknowledge that every day, many startups effectively use and get tremendous value from personas and UX, and you can't do real UX without personas.
  - rubinelli 13y ago
    I guess I'm letting my engineering background show, but I think you have to nail down the problem before you start to refine the solution. You have certainly seen people put up with absolutely horrendous interfaces, because they got the job done. Sometimes, you are entering an established market in which the UX is the problem, and in that case, focusing on that right out of the gate makes sense.
    - eflowers 13y ago
      I can see what you're saying, and I don't want to belabor it to death. But as the UX guy, a persona is what nails down the problem before ever coming to a solution. Maybe we're talking about different types of personas. The question I'd ask from the very beginning is "who are we building this for and what problem is it going to solve?" And adding a little definition to the "who" and what problem they have is the first step in building anything, and making sure you don't waste time. In the end, from day 1, from the first utterance of what your startup is about, you're building something for a human. Without empathy, you can't build the right product. And you can't empathize without personas. It's not even really a question of user experience, or user interface, it's just about nailing down the human problem.

rubinelli 13y ago

Yeah, personas are a good tool for refining your product once you know your market, but a startup by definition is still exploring. You can run extensive interviews and create a great set of personas today, then pivot into a completely different market and throw away all this work next week. Or create profiles based on what people say (which is different from what people do), build your product, and realize nobody cares.

eflowers 13y ago
Creating personas on what people say is bad UX, and not a flaw in personas. Knowing what a user behavior based interview/persona is the job of whoever is in charge of the startups UX process. I don't see how you can "know your market" without some sort of idea on who your user is, what their behaviors are, and have some sort of empathy with them. Regarding pivoting and "throwing out" the work... each discipline of a team would do that. That's your UX designers job, just like a programmer would have to throw away code or a graphic artist would throw away design collateral for the new direction. The "realize nobody cares" is exactly what good UX personas prevent. I guess if a startup doesn't know how to incorporate or conduct good UX you could run into those problems. I guess I just don't agree with your premise. You're basically describing what happens when something goes wrong with your UX and personas - so of course your argument makes sense since you're highlighting a worst case scenario. But you're neglecting to acknowledge that every day, many startups effectively use and get tremendous value from personas and UX, and you can't do real UX without personas.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  I guess I'm letting my engineering background show, but I think you have to nail down the problem before you start to refine the solution. You have certainly seen people put up with absolutely horrendous interfaces, because they got the job done. Sometimes, you are entering an established market in which the UX is the problem, and in that case, focusing on that right out of the gate makes sense.
  - eflowers 13y ago
    I can see what you're saying, and I don't want to belabor it to death. But as the UX guy, a persona is what nails down the problem before ever coming to a solution. Maybe we're talking about different types of personas. The question I'd ask from the very beginning is "who are we building this for and what problem is it going to solve?" And adding a little definition to the "who" and what problem they have is the first step in building anything, and making sure you don't waste time. In the end, from day 1, from the first utterance of what your startup is about, you're building something for a human. Without empathy, you can't build the right product. And you can't empathize without personas. It's not even really a question of user experience, or user interface, it's just about nailing down the human problem.