How to Avoid Sending Personas to the Documentation Black Hole
Rajeev Subramanian
Transforming Design Careers | Less Applying, More Landing: Build a Career You Love
Unfortunately, Personas/Archetypes/User Roles (and whatever else you want to call it) are the most misunderstood and misused terms.
Disclaimer: I'm not about to explain the differences between these terms, because in reality...it doesn't matter.
In each of the last 4 places I've worked, the company had a different idea of what they were.
Do they describe...
- Demographics?
- Behaviors?
- Real people?
In ALL 4 job experiences, personas seemed more like a mandate from some higher up stakeholder versus any real strategy behind their actual value.
At the end of the day, it was merely a deliverable. It never ONCE was used when product development actually started.
Why? Read on.
In order to assess if they will be effective in YOUR situation, ask these questions:
- Does the business/organization see value in personas? What is their understanding of them? If they don't know/don't care, or ask you to explain because you're the UX Designer, probe further to figure out what they DO care about.
- If they've made the conclusion they need personas, find out how they see value in them. (do some digging, ask you co-workers, peers, boss and more) You have to assess your situation first and the underlying outcome of what they want to achieve.
- Will creating personas make someone else's job easier? Ok so great, stakeholders have bought in. Has the project manager? developers? architects? product owners etc? How are you saving time or headaches for them?
If you are unable to clearly answer these questions and communicate in a way that makes sense to everyone, then personas will just get lost in the "abyss of documentation".
If you are hanging your hat on explaining the value of personas because they "bring in the human" aspect to products and services, you will most likely fall on deaf ears.
Don't create personas just for the sake of creating personas!
Bottom Line: Personas (and their various cousins) are snapshots of relevant and meaningful commonalities in your customer groups and need to be based on real research of your users.
Bottom Line #2: The use of Personas is a reflection of a company's maturity in accepting UX into the DNA of the organization. Each have their own unique challenges. It is up to you to seek them out.
I am sure of one thing: if you fail to dig into where these decisions come from, you will perpetually be a deliverable machine, and eventually, the value of your role will disappear.
Ask the tough questions. Don't just accept mandates. Find out the "why" all the time.
Cheers!
Rajeev Subramanian
Founder, Wellness Startup (Stealth) • Ex-Google
4yWe’re trying to revive our dormant personas and this is exactly what I wanted to hear! Thank you 😊
Design Lead and Senior Product Designer
4yYes! I have seen personas being stuffed in a drawer, while others used to drive decisions about features to build. The difference was if the client/organization saw the value and made their job easier.