People Modeling — What’s really Important
In order to design effectively, designers need to develop a deep understanding of the individuals that we are designing experiences for. We need to understand their needs as relates to the problem area that we are venturing to solution for, but we also need to understand the contexts in which they experience the problem, both internal and external. The reality is that every individual on earth exists in different contexts, so in order to design a thing that will serve a large base of individuals, we as designers have to in some way decide which contexts are most appropriate to prioritize in our solutioning. Personas or other people models are or should simply be the result of the synthesis we’ve done to understand the users we’re designing for.
Many today seem to be asking the question of whether personas or people models are good or bad, but I think what we should be endeavoring to understand is which methods help us to best understand the context of the users and how best to articulate that information to the design team and other stakeholders. If capturing the information we’ve gathered is digested easiest in the form of a persona that’s wonderful, but I think the important thing is the content.
People models such as personas are only as good as the people and organizations that create them. As Billy Frazier points out in his article, The Problem with Personas, oftentimes because of restrictive budgets, tight project timelines, or the lack of knowledge around design research and the purpose of personas, the development of personas lack the insight and thoroughness they deserve. People models should be based on qualitative user research, not secondary research, our own assumptions, or our own desires and motivations.
When using a tool like user personas I think that it’s important for designers to both engage in careful consideration of the purpose of the persona, the actions required to reach intended outcomes, and lastly the WCGW’s (what could go wrong,). Organizations and designers should then develop and standardize processes that seek to ensure the efficacy of the use of the persona including an assessment of the most critical WCGW’s. I’m aware that this may be easier said than done depending on the organization or project but I think that these steps are necessary in order to develop collective understanding of the use of such tools and to be able to communicate to stakeholders why it’s so important not to half step when using these tools.
Another problem we face as designers is that the field of design is often not very ethnically or culturally diverse. While our user research should largely be informed by the participants of that research and not ourselves, it’s oftentimes difficult for us to really understand the intricacies of other cultural and ethnic groups when we’re seeking to understand motivations and needs. Greater diversity among design teams and others involved in the design process helps to provide much needed perspective when designing for ethnically and culturally diverse user groups.
