The Limits of Personas

1
The Limits of Personas

• Peter Bagnall
• Guy Dewsbury
• Ian Sommerville

2
The use of personas

• Designers create solutions
• Need to test solutions to ensure appropriateness
• User testing during design is impractical
• Personas provide high-speed rough and ready
  testing

3
The use of personas

• Personas are proxies for real users
• Avoid self referential design
• Used with scenarios (not use cases)
• Guide design
• Specific enough
• Best to design for one person
• But that person shouldnt have gratuitous quirks

4
Why personas work

• Perspective taking
• Ability to see the world from someone elses
  perspective
• Learnt skill
• Normally learnt around age 4
• Becomes richer with age
• To develop it requires life experience
• Similar skill to method acting

5
Making personas

• You cant just make them up!
• Represent the archetypal user
• Based on data from field studies and ethnographic
  research
• Personas are not averages
• Aim for a challenging but realistic target

6
Problems making personas

• Relies on being able to gain an accurate
  understand of people
• People aren't always comfortable talking about
  sensitive personal topics
• Requires empathy, but empathy can be inaccurate
• people can hide their feelings

7
Problems using personas

• Not possible to see a design from a perspective
  you don't understand
• Persona descriptions aren't detailed enough to
  help get that understanding
• Designer must therefore have prior understanding
  of the archetype
• Persona acts as an anchor

8
Problems using personas

• Too many personas gets confusing
• Becomes harder to get into character
• Most projects have a few personas to guide the
  design
• Using personas to represent impairments too makes
  for a combinatorial nightmare

9
Questions?