[Sigia-l] Personas vs. Audience Analysis

[Dave]

On 8/31/05, Lada Gorlenko <lada at acm.org> wrote:
> Too much feeling muddles thinking, and as long
> as we are in the business of creating viable solutions, thinking is
> more important than feeling.

I can see this from a usability or engineering perspective, but
definitely NOT from a design perspective. In fact that statement
scared me.

so let's assume for a moment that what we are really talking about is
balance here, and not absolutes. I totally agree that there needs to
be a balance here.

But I also think there enough people out there thinking (business and
technology) and it is our job to be the "feelers" of the group. I feel
that if we give this up we give up way too much of ourselves, and just
let the business analysis and product marketers do our jobs for us.

Our passion and ability to be inspired through empathy to me is one of
the core differentiators between the left-brain set and the
right-brain set. More and more organizations are trying to include the
right-brain in their processes. We are the best at that, and we are so
b/c of our ability to empathize, relate, identify, and otherwise put
ourselves in the shoes of "the other".

Balancing emic/etic perspectives (if we must go anthro on you all) is
the core behind ethnographic methods. Emic (the inside view; what we
hope to acquire) and etic (the outsider view; what we bring) work well
together in finding new possibilities that niether by themselves would
be able to create.

-- dave


-- 
David Heller
E: dheller (at) gmail (dot) com
W: www (dot) synapticburn (dot) com