User Interface Engineering

33 Responses to “Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas”

1. Hugh G. Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

   Excellent point, Jared.

   We don’t use personas in my company, but I do make the effort to talk with the users of the application to understand how they use it. Which is always invaluable.

2. Sam Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

   Killer article, thanks! It makes the point that is often so lacking in persona development - the user research *needs* to be there. When I worked at Microsoft, we went out of our way to call user descriptions “profiles” and tell people to not call them personas if they were just internal guesswork and not research-based artifacts.

   And ultimately, it’s just a user research tool, like any other user research tool. It might not be best for everyone, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it the *right* way, I always say.

3. Brett Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

   Thanks for the article, Jared.
   I’m in the process now of building Personas for our company’s internal application, used by a “front line” department that is far removed from our development team. Already my qualitative research has squashed two long-standing assumptions about users that have been passed on to project managers and developers. Until now, these assumptions have influenced enhancement designs for the app. Looking forward to your Webinar in a few. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me!

4. HCNet » Blog Archive » Técnica ‘Persona’ y ‘Scenario’ Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

   [...] sobre la utilidad y beneficios reales de esta técnica. Jared Spool ha escrito recientemente un interesante post defendiendo esta técnica a raíz de la crítica que previamente hacía Len Dierickx [...]

5. Andrew Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

   You know, one thing that persona advocates could do to start convincing people of their value is *publish some good ones.* Cooper, UIE, and other design firms that espouse personas have basically spent the last decade telling us: don’t write crappy personas. But there are almost no solid examples of great personas that actually added value to a real design project. If these things are so great, and really do all that stuff that you say, *show us some.* If Jason Fried has never seen an example of a robust persona, you should assume that there are thousands of working designers out there who also haven’t seen one. And no matter how many times we hear “good personas are great tools,” without examples, we don’t have any idea what that really means.

   No, these examples won’t be generically useful for all companies and all products, but at least there’d be something we could point to and say: “this is an example of what kinds of information in a robust persona led to specific design decisions.”

6. Michael Hughes Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

   Your spot-on point is that robust personas cannot be the product of fiction and fantasy. I think part of the bad rap comes from the cutesy, often irrelevant detail, we see in the “imaginative” personas that really doesn’t shed light on the user context.

7. Andrew Hinton Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

   I blogged about this a while back, and came to the conclusion that, to a degree, Fried & co are correct — you really can’t design for someone other than yourself. Which is why we need personas — they allow us to play the role of the user we are not, and help keep us honest about those people. (When they’re done correctly.) We can’t design for anyone but ourselves, which is why it’s so essential that we have great skills at pretending to be someone else.

   This is what Alan Cooper did, after all, when he hatched his persona-based approach.

   There’s an article for B&A in the editorial hopper that explains all this better (not published yet) but the very rough blog post I started with is here: http://www.inkblurt.com/archives/484

8. Christopher Fahey Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 9:43 pm

   The remaining 95% just made up the descriptions from internal guesswork… If you’re just going to guess on the personas, why bother?

   Personas provide a fabulous way for people who understand their audience/users to communicate their understanding to people who do not understand that audience in a rapid and meaningful way. They are also a great way for people who have different understandings of their target audience (users, customers, etc) to reach common ground on who they are designing for, particularly if the objective is to expand into new audiences rather than simply to serve an existing audience. Neither of these uses of personas requires any original actual hard field research to be done. All it takes is a few good conversations and collaborations around a white board, and a little running around to gather existing documentation.

   This isn’t “guesswork”. It’s communication. In my experience (building web sites for smart clients) using personas in this way has been immensely powerful in ensuring that the new members of the team understand who they are designing for. And our work producing the personas themselves helps reassure the client that we, the design team, are on the same page they are with regards to who we are designing for. In my opinion one very common complaint about personas — that they are created and then ignored — ignores the important fact that the creation of the personas in the first place is probably the most important step, at least from the consultant’s point of view, as well as the initial sharing of them with the team. Without this exercise, our understanding of users is often based only on what our clients tell us in the kick off meeting, and maybe on research documentation that only a few members of the design team can ever be expected to fully ingest. A little stack of compelling personas, however, is a great way to get the design leaders in synch on the user strategy, and they will be consumed by the whole team.

   In all of these cases, please note that I am saying that personas are for the consultant’s benefit, not for the client’s benefit. We are not giving personas to the client to reveal information to them that they don’t already know. Rather, we are using personas to help us and the client reach agreement and understanding about knowledge that already exists, to help us move forward in the same direction. Personas, in this model, are the static artifact of a collaborative exercise, not the actionable product of rigorous research.

   I only say this because I fear that the idealized personas you and many others often describe and champion — which can quite frankly cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce — will discourage many designers from using them in other less rigorous but nonetheless powerful ways, especially when such large budgets are not available.

   Spending a single day building a set of ad-hoc personas using no research and without talking to real users or potential users doesn’t make the resulting personas “crappy”, so long as everyone understands the purpose of the exercise.

9. Christopher Fahey Says:
   November 14th, 2007 at 10:00 pm

   Andrew wrote: You know, one thing that persona advocates could do to start convincing people of their value is *publish some good ones.

   Absolutely. It’s all just talk, and highly idealized, too. Advocates of robust personas unfailingly paint dreamy idyllic pictures of wondrous projects where the team has hundreds and hundreds of person-hours budgeted for persona research. But we readers are left having to imagine how great, how non-crappy, their personas are. Show us the goods!

   Honestly I’m skeptical of how many “robust persona” advocates (a) actually make their personas as robust as they say, and (b) use them at all. Jared, I’m not pointing the finger at you necessarily — perhaps you are in the “if you can’t do em right, don’t do em at all” camp. Maybe your clients typically pay top dollar for really robust personas (and I completely agree that robust personas are the best way to go if you can afford it). But it is hard to bear the finger wagging sometimes.

   It’s also important to note that Cooper has published a few of their personas in the past, but I can’t see how they can be seen as anything but quintessential examples of “crappy” personas. A picture and a paragraph. That’s all, folks. The person who invented personas doesn’t even come close to measuring up to the yardsticks being held up today.

10. Jared Spool Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 12:43 am

    Personas provide a fabulous way for people who understand their audience/users to communicate their understanding to people who do not understand that audience in a rapid and meaningful way. They are also a great way for people who have different understandings of their target audience (users, customers, etc) to reach common ground on who they are designing for, particularly if the objective is to expand into new audiences rather than simply to serve an existing audience. Neither of these uses of personas requires any original actual hard field research to be done. All it takes is a few good conversations and collaborations around a white board, and a little running around to gather existing documentation.

    Christopher,

    I believe what you describing is not a persona but a user description. If you have a good understanding of who your users are, describing them for others to understand is an excellent tool.

    However, to be a persona, in our definition, it must be based on primary user research. The research could have been done months or years before the persona was created, but it’s still based on primary research. (The older the data, the more likely it becomes distorted, so I think it’s dangerous to wait too long.)

    User descriptions may or may not be accurate. Often, they are based on common myths about users (“all of our users are above average”) and miss a lot of the richness you get when you spend time actually watching and talking to users in their own environments.

    Well-crafted personas are more likely to capture that richness and reflect what’s really happening with users. For many teams, this is critical to build a common understanding and vision for the design.

    In all of these cases, please note that I am saying that personas are for the consultant’s benefit, not for the client’s benefit. We are not giving personas to the client to reveal information to them that they don’t already know.

    In almost all cases where we recommend personas, it’s when the client team has little or no actual knowledge about who their users are and what they really do with the design. In many cases, it’s when the team has focused all their previous efforts just trying to get the functionality to work and implementing features offered by competitors. These teams are finally ready to think about designing experiences, having the sudden realization they know very little about the experiences users are currently having. That’s where personas have the most value.

    I only say this because I fear that the idealized personas you and many others often describe and champion — which can quite frankly cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce — will discourage many designers from using them in other less rigorous but nonetheless powerful ways, especially when such large budgets are not available.

    Good design isn’t cheap. The clients we work with typically have annual revenues in six to eight figures, so spending $10,000-$20,000 on really getting to know their users isn’t a hard pitch.

    That said, it doesn’t have to be expensive. If you can free up 2 to 4 people’s time for 25 hours a week for four-and-a-half weeks, you can build very robust personas with little additional expense. Again, when it’s important, teams seem to find a way to make this happen.

    Spending a single day building a set of ad-hoc personas using no research and without talking to real users or potential users doesn’t make the resulting personas “crappy”, so long as everyone understands the purpose of the exercise.

    I’ll agree that spending a day documenting what the team thinks they know about their users is an excellent exercise. However, these aren’t personas (and if you insist on calling them personas, we’ll consider them crappy).

11. Jared Spool Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 12:48 am

    Andrew wrote:

    You know, one thing that persona advocates could do to start convincing people of their value is *publish some good ones.* Cooper, UIE, and other design firms that espouse personas have basically spent the last decade telling us: don’t write crappy personas. But there are almost no solid examples of great personas that actually added value to a real design project. If these things are so great, and really do all that stuff that you say, *show us some.*

    The quality of persona shows in how it manifests itself in the way it influences the design team to make smart decisions.

    Unfortunately, the paper document describing the persona doesn’t represent that at all. Showing personas is like showing design specs — you can’t really tell the good ones from the bad ones by reading other people’s documents.

    Instead, you need to look beyond the document in how it was created. What makes a good persona is how the research and analysis that went into was done. I can walk you through the process (and just did in today’s virtual seminar), but the end deliverable will look the same to an outsider as a crappy persona deliverable.

    That’s why you never see them.

12. Jay Zipursky Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 1:04 am

    I’ve always maintained that the persona “destination” is not as important as the “journey”. As Jared says, personas without research are more than a waste of time.

    However, I’m more skeptical whether a persona can stand on its own without the people who either did the research or those that analyzed the research. In other words, is even a well-researched persona description useful to a designer who’s never met a real-life user? I suspect writing a persona that is that useful is a challenge.

13. Jay Zipursky Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 1:09 am

    I see Jared addressed my comment before I even wrote it! (Serves me right for not refreshing first.)

14. Daniel Szuc Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 2:12 am

    Speaking with users to create Personas helps.

    It shows a project team new to the technique that:-

    a) Its important to speak to your users i.e. using user interviews and

    b) That the feedback to help create the Personas can reduce internal argument or speculation about a feature.

    We recently used this approach to show that users did not like the amount of copy being displayed on a Home Page (that we were tasked with redesigning).

    Now we could have said this based on best practice or expert review, but to have this come from the voice of our users and then demonstrate this in our Personas really helped our cause.

15. Mimo Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    ok. now i know more about personas.
    or let’s say: you are using another kind of personas then wikipedia is describing them.
    building a relationship to the users who will use the product you design is the best thing to do.
    even if you are already the guys who will use the product yourselves.

16. pauric Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Jason: “They’re artificial, abstract, and fictitious. I don’t think you can build a great product for a person that doesn’t exist.”

    When a persona skeptic sees Robert DiNiro in The Godfather, do they think..
    a) Mr DiNiro is really a mobster
    b) Mr DiNiro is acting out the role of fictitious person after having spent time researching the character

    In lieu of getting a real mobster for the role, someone can method act a convincing substitute to help flesh out the story. While clearly different, I see a lot of similarities with Personas.

    pauric

17. Personas vs. User Descriptions; Apples vs. Tomatoes » UIE Brain Sparks Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 10:32 am

    [...] always intriguing Christopher Fahey commented on yesterday’s post about Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas: Personas provide a fabulous [...]

18. Christopher Fahey Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    What makes a good persona is how the research and analysis that went into was done.

    It seems to me, then, that the best kind of persona would consist of:
    # A cover sheet which resembles the canonical persona — name, photo, age, goals, etc.
    # A couple of pages of stats and research excerpts to back up the first page, and to enrich the persona.

    … 2 to 4 people’s time for 25 hours a week for four-and-a-half weeks, you can build very robust personas with little additional expense.

    Heh, sounds like you’re in the $50-100k range already, at least by New York standards! That said, I agree that for an organization with little knowledge of their users this is very much money well spent. But it’s important for people to understand that any essay like this one that says that personas must be robust should also say that they must cost tens of thousands of dollars and must take a month or more to produce, just so people can put their own organizations, clients, projects, and assignments in the proper perspective. The vast majority of practicioners don’t have this option, so perhaps it’s more important to target this essay at the decision makers rather than the practicioners. That is, it should be “Managers! Pay more money for user research!” rather than “Designers! Stop being lazy!”.

    In almost all cases where we recommend personas, it’s when the client team has little or no actual knowledge about who their users are and what they really do with the design.

    Your point is well taken that lots of organizations don’t know their audience/users at all. And some products have very specialized users whose needs are hard to discern except through direct observations and analysis. In those cases, it’s foolish to just generate personas from essentially thin air.

    But many other businesses and organizations actually know their audience extremely well, especially in publishing, marketing, and retail where research is conducted, evaluated, and tweaked constantly. Such businesses live and die based on their understanding of their users. We can walk into such a client’s office on day 1 and have access to years worth of server logs, focus group data, marketing plans, polls and surveys, sales reports, market analyses, etc. And we can talk to the people who make and analyze that research face to face. In those industries, the kind of personas I was describing can be created using existing research, and this can be done very quickly — in a matter of days, or even hours. So in this case the personas are highly research-based, even if the research wasn’t done for the explicit purpose of creating design personas.

19. adrian chan Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    I was surprised at how lively the discussion about personas became there! I dont quite understand how expanding the user from one (myself) to some greater number of archteyped or stereotype, even if fictitious, personas can hurt. At a minimum to increase our ability to reflect on user needs in a variety of use cases…

    Interestingly tho, I think in social media/social web they may be pretty unnecessary. Here I think it’s more important that designers join the system in question (preferably a number of them), and use them, and then observe other users. There’s little need for personas in social media design because users exist, and they’re real.

    cheers,
    adrian

20. Jared Spool Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    Adrian Chan wrote:

    Interestingly tho, I think in social media/social web they may be pretty unnecessary. Here I think it’s more important that designers join the system in question (preferably a number of them), and use them, and then observe other users. There’s little need for personas in social media design because users exist, and they’re real.

    Sermo is a social network for doctors and other medical professionals. Non-doctors can’t join.

    I’m sure the developers, while having participated in other social networks, could benefit from a well-crafted set of personas and scenarios, since this social network isn’t your father’s MySpace.

    So, I’d argue that not all social networks are immune from needing a well-crafted set of personas and scenarios.

21. Personas: Gode råd & meninger » More discussions on personas have been published recently Says:
    November 17th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    [...] Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas Jared Spool 14-11-2007 [...]

22. Ukas lenker 16.11.2007 hos IAllenkelhet - Fagblogg om brukervennlighet skrevet av NetLife Research Says:
    November 17th, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    [...] slår tilbake mot kritikken av [...]

23. Len Dierickx Says:
    November 18th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    Great article, but I understand Jasons’ point of view and it probably comes down to what the the 95% of the organizations have when trying to design : no resources.

    I still believe that it is better to design for a persona that has been build with whatever you have (analytics data, sales department stories about clients, marketing reports but no real people) then nothing at all.
    Especially when you as a designer are not the visitor of your website or user of the tool you are building.

    A tool in the right hands can be very useful, even if that tools isn’t as powerful as it should be (no real people or marketingresearch).
    Tools (=personas) are rarely the problem, the problem starts when the people using the tool overestimate the value of the tool.

24. Lite om personas « Begrepp Information Arkitektur Modell Metod Process Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    [...] Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas (Av Jared Spool) [...]

25. Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Some links for light reading (21/11/07) Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

    [...] Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas [...]

26. Bryan Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 11:42 pm

    Up until recently we had never used personas as a method of designing and assessing websites web built. A review of our organisations sites by an external contractor introduced us to their use, and I’ve got to say it made a lot of sense. There were a number of varied personas attempting to represent our varied client base, which were then used with ‘actual’ people carrying out scenarios to determine where things might be falling over. What an eye opener it was, I saw many areas that needed an overhaul, and equally some areas which they found worked quite well (thankfully one was my own!).

    Our challenge now is to construct additional personas for staff and visitors, who differ from the usual client base, so that their sections of the site can equally be moved forward.

27. Personas Suck - Vlakonline Says:
    November 23rd, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    [...] In fact, the best personas are created out of exactly this type of research. As Jared Spool rightly points out, you shouldn’t mistake crappy personas for personas being [...]

28. What I love online today | Lisa McMillan dot com Says:
    November 30th, 2007 at 4:00 am

    [...] Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas » UIE Brain Sparks [...]

29.   Creating robust personas by Communications from DMN Says:
    December 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 am

    [...] They can be useful, but they have their limits. User interface expert Jared Spool recently weighed in on this subject, and came out in favour of [...]

30. Weekly Link Roundup: Orange Juice Edition » resist - cleveland design Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    [...] Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas Wufoo’s form templates and gallery. [...]

31. twoday.tuwien.ac.at/uidesignweblog Says:
    December 12th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    Is using “Personas” a good way for design ……

    For the second blogtivity, we had to find a post on another weblog, writing a comment to it. When dealing with the problem, I found the following post on UIE Brain Sparks

    Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas
    There’s been a lot of discussion lat…

32. Personas and the Advantage of Designing for Yourself - Bokardo Says:
    February 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    [...] Fahey, picking up on a comment to Jared Spool’s reaction to Fried’s piece, proposes a novel solution that would help [...]

33. Personas Suck | Editweapon Says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    [...] - You know the thing about Personas? They suck when you build them sans field research. Why? Because you’re not supposed: …Recently we conducted a study of several dozen [...]

Add a Comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Spam check: Please type "uie" here.