<story><title>Why Personas Fail</title><url>https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-personas-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BoorishBears</author><text>I know it’s just an example, but does one need Bob to come to that realization? If you say you’re building for mobile, you look at the strengths and weaknesses of input on mobile devices.&lt;p&gt;The biggest strength is precise finger movement. The biggest weakness is lack of tactile feedback.&lt;p&gt;That leads to the same conclusion without extraneous data.&lt;p&gt;I feel like personas are a way to force people to think critically about the end product. That’s not a bad thing, but just deciding to critically consider what your goal is before building something already goes a long way.</text></item><item><author>blowski</author><text>When it&amp;#x27;s just abstract information, especially information that has no basis in user research, it is worthless.&lt;p&gt;But I&amp;#x27;ll give an example of where I&amp;#x27;ve seen this be useful.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Bob is a marketing guy. He mostly uses his mobile for calls, but doesn&amp;#x27;t have a headset. As a result, he can&amp;#x27;t type quickly while on the phone, so any UI he needs to use while on the phone should be optimised for mouse clicks or single keypresses.&lt;p&gt;This came out of some actual user research and was the justification for spending time on a &amp;#x27;point and click&amp;#x27; friendly UI.</text></item><item><author>dhimes</author><text>OK but this is a 30 minute exercise: whom are we building this for?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data about the personas:  where they live, how many kids, etc.&lt;p&gt;I would love to hear about a time where the persona development led to a new insight &lt;i&gt;because it&amp;#x27;s a persona&lt;/i&gt;.  Like: this person&amp;#x27;s a parent-&amp;gt; probably attends parent-teacher groups-&amp;gt; voila!  needs XXXX</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  it would make more sense to have
  just one typical user,
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Some products have users with distinct - almost contradictory - requirements.&lt;p&gt;For example, some spreadsheet users want simple graphs with big numbers that will look good in presentations, and a simple UI they can use on their phone. Other spreadsheet users want to make complex graphs with labelled arrows, thousands of points, multiple different graphs with aligned axes, and things like that.&lt;p&gt;Multiple personas can be useful for expressing that fact - otherwise you&amp;#x27;re stuck saying the just-one-user wants things to be simple and complicated at the same time.</text></item><item><author>bambax</author><text>In my former life as a consultant I came to very much dislike personas as implemented by ux designers.&lt;p&gt;Personas are a magnet for prejudice: they are based on the idea that clusters of people all behave the same (old people, young people, professionals, stay-at-home mothers, what have you).&lt;p&gt;This very idea is, I think, flawed. If we really need to sort people into groups, then we should use criteria based on what people are trying to achieve &lt;i&gt;right now&lt;/i&gt;, not inherent characteristics that are supposed to influence&amp;#x2F;define their behavior all of the time.&lt;p&gt;Therefore it would make more sense to have &lt;i&gt;just one&lt;/i&gt; typical user, with different attitudes based on her -changing- goals.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>I think &amp;quot;does one need Bob&amp;quot; is the wrong way to look at it.&lt;p&gt;Humans are narrative animals. Storytelling is a human universal. Done right, personas are a way we can engage our narrative capacity to help us in thinking through the complexities of a domain. (Done wrong, they let our preconceptions and prejudices erase the complexity of our domain.)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not personally a huge fan of personas. Instead, I&amp;#x27;m big on primary user research, where we spend a lot of time studying actual people, their lives, and how our products fit into them. But if the group of makers is large enough, you need some way to organize the insights from that into something convenient for discussion.&lt;p&gt;At my last startup we were working on something related to purchasing decisions. For us, the satisficer vs optimizer distinction was key. We did dozens of user interviews, and user testing each week.&lt;p&gt;We ended up with two main personas, one for the satisficer and one for the optimizer. It was handy to be able to talk about Bob vs Cate in terms of how each would react to a given design choice. By having specific imaginary people made it easier for us to put ourselves in their shoes, to talk about how the product fit into their lives.&lt;p&gt;We would also talk about specific real people (e.g., user test subjects, actual users) and about theoretical constructs. But having fictional archetypes was useful to us in thinking empathetically without getting bogged down in a specific person&amp;#x27;s details.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Personas Fail</title><url>https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-personas-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BoorishBears</author><text>I know it’s just an example, but does one need Bob to come to that realization? If you say you’re building for mobile, you look at the strengths and weaknesses of input on mobile devices.&lt;p&gt;The biggest strength is precise finger movement. The biggest weakness is lack of tactile feedback.&lt;p&gt;That leads to the same conclusion without extraneous data.&lt;p&gt;I feel like personas are a way to force people to think critically about the end product. That’s not a bad thing, but just deciding to critically consider what your goal is before building something already goes a long way.</text></item><item><author>blowski</author><text>When it&amp;#x27;s just abstract information, especially information that has no basis in user research, it is worthless.&lt;p&gt;But I&amp;#x27;ll give an example of where I&amp;#x27;ve seen this be useful.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Bob is a marketing guy. He mostly uses his mobile for calls, but doesn&amp;#x27;t have a headset. As a result, he can&amp;#x27;t type quickly while on the phone, so any UI he needs to use while on the phone should be optimised for mouse clicks or single keypresses.&lt;p&gt;This came out of some actual user research and was the justification for spending time on a &amp;#x27;point and click&amp;#x27; friendly UI.</text></item><item><author>dhimes</author><text>OK but this is a 30 minute exercise: whom are we building this for?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen talk about building personas where you try to specify all kinds of ancillary data about the personas:  where they live, how many kids, etc.&lt;p&gt;I would love to hear about a time where the persona development led to a new insight &lt;i&gt;because it&amp;#x27;s a persona&lt;/i&gt;.  Like: this person&amp;#x27;s a parent-&amp;gt; probably attends parent-teacher groups-&amp;gt; voila!  needs XXXX</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  it would make more sense to have
  just one typical user,
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Some products have users with distinct - almost contradictory - requirements.&lt;p&gt;For example, some spreadsheet users want simple graphs with big numbers that will look good in presentations, and a simple UI they can use on their phone. Other spreadsheet users want to make complex graphs with labelled arrows, thousands of points, multiple different graphs with aligned axes, and things like that.&lt;p&gt;Multiple personas can be useful for expressing that fact - otherwise you&amp;#x27;re stuck saying the just-one-user wants things to be simple and complicated at the same time.</text></item><item><author>bambax</author><text>In my former life as a consultant I came to very much dislike personas as implemented by ux designers.&lt;p&gt;Personas are a magnet for prejudice: they are based on the idea that clusters of people all behave the same (old people, young people, professionals, stay-at-home mothers, what have you).&lt;p&gt;This very idea is, I think, flawed. If we really need to sort people into groups, then we should use criteria based on what people are trying to achieve &lt;i&gt;right now&lt;/i&gt;, not inherent characteristics that are supposed to influence&amp;#x2F;define their behavior all of the time.&lt;p&gt;Therefore it would make more sense to have &lt;i&gt;just one&lt;/i&gt; typical user, with different attitudes based on her -changing- goals.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>burkemw3</author><text>I think of Bob as a team communication tool. Hopefully, most people on the team are familiar with Bob. When I&amp;#x27;m working with someone else on that critical thinking thing about the end product, I can ask &amp;quot;What about Bob?&amp;quot; and teammates know what I&amp;#x27;m talking about. Bob is a mobile user might not be complex enough to warrant a persona. I think personas are more likely to be a useful tool as the number of user types&amp;#x2F;goals increases.&lt;p&gt;Personas can also be a kind of checklist as a change is made, ensuring that the change makes sense (and doesn&amp;#x27;t break) in the most common product scenarios.</text></comment>