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Are you hiding behind your personas?

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Personas continue to be a hot topic in our training classes and in the blogosphere. Kristin Zhivago fears we might be hiding behind personas instead of getting to know actual customers.

Kristin is right as usual; nothing can replace the value of interviewing a real person. And you can see a lot more in an onsite interview than you can hear in a phone interview.

I'm frequently asked about surveys and phone calls and telemarketing and a dozen other methods for not visiting clients. Why is it so hard for product managers and marketers (not all of course, but many) to visit customers and non-customers?

Personas are a powerful tool to convey market information in context for marketing and development. But those who create personas must be grounded in the market. Interview some people before you begin.


Michael has some interesting additional thoughts.

I hope we're not hiding...

Posted by Jim Holland at 2008-03-03 05:18 AM
Often I see companies spending thousands on creating, and more hours trying to define the perfect personas. The result is 19-20 page personas that no one uses. Here's the reality check - if you were to spend the same funds on actually visiting customers, prospects, and the market, you would have a most realistic view for defining requirements from real market problems.

Hiding behind your pseudo-personas?

Posted by Påhl Melin at 2008-03-13 05:35 PM
I'm constantly surprised by the ever misuse of the persona tool. Since Alan Cooper introduced the persona concept a decade ago, lots of interaction designers and marketing professionals have embraced its use. But I suspect a large portion of the persona practicians, don't really understand the fundamental concepts behind personas. It's impossible— by definition—to "hide behind a persona", since you create a persona by interviewing and observing real users/customers in their native environments. So the whole discussion is flawed and just highlights the common malpractice of creating "pseudo-personas" by ignorant designers. It's unfortunate that a very effective tool like personas is so often tainted by unskilled practice of designers not really understanding the persona concept.

agreed

Posted by Steve Johnson at 2008-03-14 11:16 AM
As you say, it's unfortunate that a very effective tool like personas is so often tainted by unskilled practice of designers not really understanding the persona concept. A hammer can be misused by an amateur as can any tool. Personas should never be a creative writing exercise; they should always be fact-based. Cooper made this clear, as we try to do in Practical Product Management and Requirements That Work. We can hide behind our personas or we can interview people and create realistic personas. Obviously, personas are only as good as the data that created them.