ReachCustomersOnline.com

The Persona Crutch

Posted by TimSlavin at April 9, 2004

"I’m going to go out on a limb on this one. I’m going to go on record and say publicly that I personally dislike personas. In fact, I’d have to be honest and say I really hate using them, I hate writing them, and I seriously hate how popular they’ve become. There, I said it. Shoot me.

However, the reasons I dislike personas happens to be for more personal reasons as a designer than the real usefulness or function personas serve. I fully understand the value personas bring to the table on a project for many people in the entire business organization. I also fully understand how useful they can be as a tool to create more focused feature specifications with teams, especially teams that contain non-designers representing every business unit inside a corporation. I also know how personas can help ground conversations towards a more user-centered design focus where none had existed before.

But the reason I hate personas is more personal for me as a designer. I feel whenever I use personas, I tend to become detached emotionally and less engaged with a project. Maybe that’s just me, but the one thing I’ve seen with personas that can be a slippery slope for designers is when the persona becomes a replacement for what I feel is a crucial practice in which every designer must actively engage: becoming the user."

Great counter argument against the use of personas, with good ideas and links. From Design by Fire. I found the link through another weblog, asterisk, and his post Personas For Content Development, which also is worth a read on the topic of personas. The latter piece includes good ideas, a response to Design Fires' piece, reader comments, and links to learn more about personas.

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