Lene, to introduce our conversation about personas: What is a persona?
A persona is a description of a fictitious person that could exist but does not. It's most often based on data, either qualitative or quantitative data.
So, we should have some data to build a persona.
In my opinion, yes. I know that are people who disagree, but in my opinion, we should have data. Otherwise, it will just be imagination, and it will be too fictitious. As a method, personas are research-based.
Indeed. However, in your talk on new trends in personas, you mentioned that the 'non-use' of data to build personas we could see that it is becoming quite common. How often do you see this happening?
I think, in practice, it’s more common than we expect. The whole Lean UX has started this trend that you don’t need to do a lot of research upfront, but you can do the research later. This is why a lot of companies just jump into doing personas based on their own assumptions. But what happens is that they never get beyond that, so they never have time to actually do the research, so they stay on their assumptions. And often, your assumptions are really, really wrong.
Therefore, the consequences are a disaster.
It's a disaster. It's a disaster because, of course, they realize that they might have different target groups, but they don't realize what is really the differences in the target groups. To whom should we really pay attention?
Why do you think this trend of not using data initiated? Because, in the beginning, developing personas was very research-oriented and grounded on data. What has happened on the way?
It's the same with all methods when we go out in the field. Because time is so constrained, we jump to conclusions. It's the same with usability. Now you do fewer studies and fewer tests. We used to have a whole framework based on research. But it's when it trickles down to practice that a lot of the heavy work is forgotten or made different, or there are many time constraints. It's like the management can't really see the benefit of doing research because it costs money.
