[Sigia-l] Personas vs. Audience Analysis

[Dan Saffer]

On Aug 30, 2005, at 11:54 AM, Dave wrote:

> sorry if I was not clear. I thought I was defending personas, by
> pointing out that they do deal w/ "doing" AND they deal w/
> "personality" of the user as well.

By focusing on personality, unless it affects behavior, you are  
probably hampering your personas by defining them too narrowly. Such  
a persona set doesn't scale very well. Imagine if Google or Ebay had  
a set of personas that were defined by personality types.

>
> I do like pointing out that personas help the entire team develop
> EMPATHY. This can be pointed to as a key part of the persona. Thanx!
>

I'm starting to be of the mind that empathy is less important in  
personas than is understanding. I can empathize with your situation,  
but unless I understand it, perhaps more fully than you do yourself  
(seeing the latent needs and the bigger picture perhaps), I might not  
be able to design a solution. Empathy can only go so far and it leads  
down the path of personas with fictionalized bios.




Dan Saffer
Sr. Interaction Designer, Adaptive Path
http://www.adaptivepath.com
http://www.odannyboy.com