Why I don’t teach Persona Creation when I teach UX
TL; DR — Because of insufficient Return On Investment.
A prelude to an article I wrote on creating personas.
I teach a User Experience Design course at a local university.
I’ve done my audits of user experience design courses. In fact, I have a table summarizing what ground they cover.
I’ve been tasked to create a workshop or class syllabus to teach User Experience Design 5 times (Now, going on 8).
But, in all of those times — I have never included personas in the syllabus. I mention it, but I don’t teach it to students.
I want them to learn what’s critical, more than what’s traditional.
Learning By Doing
I tell students repeatedly: Teaching (and learning) design isn’t about memorization, as much as it is about about practice.
I wanted to take the real-life situations I’ve been in, and see what have been the most critical steps and processes in doing UX design.
So, in my career working for digital teams, I’ve helped build 28 digital products (mostly websites, some apps) and then planned for 21 others (i.e. did the strategy, initial IA or business model presentation).
Out of those, I’ve used (legitimate) personas 5 times. I found 4 sufficiently useful. 1 set was….sadly, a waste (one of the early useful lessons I needed to learn).
Legit Personas or Bust
I’m not saying they’re useless.
By all means, I accept that some of the sites I worked on may have excelled or succeeded if they had personas*.
*i.e. Maybe if personas were part of the planning, or if, as a result, the brand owners/clients may have had more empathy, or the projects had clearer feature sets.
I know what personas are for, and I know why they were created; I’ve recently been working on more projects that can accommodate them (since my role focuses on UX research now).
But, to clarify — now, going into a real-world example:
If we were to launch some e-commerce revisions or a content publishing site in one month, I will most probably allot the “UX” time that I have for… not personas.
Strategy Means Saying “No” to Things
For me, this is the part of UX that is “craft” and strategy — it is knowing what to apply, when.
Not taking a set or prescribed stream of deliverables and using them as signposts of accomplishment — even when they aren’t as useful to the group, given the set amount of resources (time and money).
And, I say this, because I’ve done exactly that before.
When I was new, I would follow, to the letter, what the UX books said — which is exactly what you do when you’re learning a trade.
But let’s say you need to launch a usable, lead-generation website for a calamity in one day. What would you do?
I mean, you could.
But, also, I would rather spend my part of that one day where I can be most helpful: for example,
- drafting a clean userflow and content hierarchy, then
- wireframing with the designers and developers, and
- quick paper prototype testing, even internally,
to make sure that even the rushed website is fully comprehensible and as usable as we could have prepared.
A Persona is a Tool
“To a hammer, everything is a nail.”
And like all tools,
1) The true power lies in the wield-er, and
2) It is best used in particular relevant scenarios.
For how to apply them when they are necessary, I created a follow-up post specifically for a practical, but comprehensive persona creation process.
And, for further reading, you can check out this article, from User Interface Engineering on Disposable Personas, and a method (similar to the one I wrote about), on data-driven personas in one team workshop.
Originally published at www.angelaobias.com on October 7, 2015.
⏩ 👫 If you found this helpful, please share it to the people it can help, too.
As I mention in weeknotes I write, I’m a fan of designing in the open.
If you want to follow the things I’m learning along the way, as a researcher, strategist and teacher, follow me on Medium or subscribe to our yet-to-be-regular newsletter.
