Loading ...What would we do if they banned personas?
Steve Portigal published a thought-provoking article about the failings of personas in ACM’s Interactions magazine earlier this month. His fundamental argument is that personas are more dangerous than useful because they “are misused to maintain a safe distance from the people we design for… manifesting contempt over understanding, and creating the façade of user centered-ness…”. If you want to read it, ask Steve to send you a copy – it’s a stimulating read.
When I first tried to write today’s blog post, I read the volumes of criticism and commentary from user experience heavyweights like Peter Merholz at Adaptive Path, and Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering. Then I tried to write my own clever and finely tuned rebuttal. After all, we’re proud to be recognized for creating and using excellent personas (at least, according to one source). I mean, if I believe in them, I have to defend some turf here, right?
I tried that (for about three hours yesterday), and it made for a really, really dull blog post. So let’s take a different approach.
Let’s pretend that personas are banned. What would we do?
