[HN Gopher] Fixing User Personas
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       Fixing User Personas
        
       Author : jrdnbwmn
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2021-01-05 12:18 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (learnuxd.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (learnuxd.io)
        
       | laurex wrote:
       | Personas are problematic when they assume goals and values of
       | users. I've seen many product teams create personas or jobs to be
       | done that literally come from their own idea of what "someone
       | like that" or "someone in this role" would need. Conversely, when
       | we start with the idea that we _don 't_ know, define a customer
       | and then ask them unbiased and non-leading questions about what
       | they have done (NOT what they 'want'), it doesn't matter as much
       | whether the framework is personas, JTBD, or any other approach.
        
         | Groxx wrote:
         | Yeah, there's the same kind of problem with pretty much all
         | "mental frameworks for improving the quality of X".
         | 
         | If you _follow the steps mindlessly_ , you get nothing.
         | Potentially less than nothing, since now you appear to have
         | more authority than if you had not.
         | 
         | If you _use it to think better_ , i.e. to expose your blind-
         | spots or do something more carefully than normal, the steps
         | barely matter - the goal was achieved, you're thinking better.
         | 
         | Every system can be "gamed" / undercut if you're determined or
         | lazy enough. The goal of these systems is to break people out
         | of that _habit_ (whether they 're aware of it or not), they
         | can't _guarantee_ it 's done.
        
         | jrdnbwmn wrote:
         | Agree. Good tools like personas, JTBD, or whatever are a result
         | of well-done research, not assumptions. As soon as assumptions
         | enter the mix, the tool (and therefore decision-making) is
         | biased and will give you the wrong information.
        
         | cm11 wrote:
         | The article touches a bit on this in terms of "proto-personas"
         | and suggests an alternative method (assumption maps). To me,
         | there's a point that you can build products from assumptions.
         | You'd be trading risk (less validation) for speed and perhaps
         | focus, which isn't inherently wrong. But most importantly you
         | shouldn't pretend it's unbiased, user-driven, or that there
         | aren't blindspots. And you shouldn't use personas as the tool
         | of choice in that case. The distinction is rarely made though
         | and problematic.
        
       | alwayshumans wrote:
       | I think the concept of a persona has morphed and been abused over
       | time.
       | 
       | With my team we use them as a tool to organise a set of
       | assumption's or hypotheses that we want to test. Then through
       | further user research tools we look to validate these
       | assumptions.
       | 
       | On the whole it's not perfect but it works well most of the time.
        
       | jjgreen wrote:
       | Not really my field, but the page itself is a nice example of how
       | to do a "get our newsletter", not with a dirty great popup that
       | you have to dismiss, but with a discreet little thing in the
       | bottom-right corner.
        
       | PragmaticPulp wrote:
       | Article is spot-on about personas being misused. The author
       | provides some good guidelines for getting them back on track, but
       | I've had more luck simply abandoning the personas concept
       | altogether.
       | 
       | Personas might be useful as a brainstorming session to identify
       | pain points, product interaction context, and problems to be
       | solved. However, once those key goals have been identified, why
       | not simply abandon the persona concept for the rest of the
       | process?
       | 
       | Focus on solving the problems you've identified, not appealing to
       | 3-5 extremely specific imaginary personas.
        
         | jrdnbwmn wrote:
         | I know what you're saying, and I think this is why lots of
         | people are abandoning personas in favor of things like JTBD.
         | But I think personas (or something similar) can be useful for
         | those other parts of the process, especially if they're based
         | in research and aren't "imaginary".
         | 
         | For example, thinking about how a particular user flow would
         | work for a specific relevant persona/JTBD is useful for design
         | decision making. It helps you see things from a user
         | archetype's eye, rather than through your own designer eyes or
         | through the eyes of "the user" which isn't specific or helpful.
         | 
         | This is all assuming, of course, that you're building personas
         | correctly, which in my experience is rarely done.
        
       | tornadofart wrote:
       | What the frick is this pseudo marketing babble. Probably written
       | by a bad AI
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-06 23:01 UTC)