Should we kill personas?Marine Barbaroux - @miss_embe

Head of UX, Red Gate

30 Apr 2014

image: hugh mcleod - @gapidvoid

image: Ben Melbourne - @benmel

1) the "cooper"

• Designed to create empathy.• Requires research up front. • They are not aligned with

MKT personas (MKT comes after design)

• Sometimes, they were not credible because they use irrelevant details

• They are hard to keep up to date

• They REQUIRE CUSTOMERS to be designed.

2) the Lean UX ad-Hoc (or proto) personas

image: Jeff Gothelf

• Designed to create alignement in the team.

• Assumes the customer is an hypothesis like the others.

• Quicker to do, but can be very wrong, so you need to check your model exists --> there are many more things to check.

• Complexify hypothesis (don't know if your product or customers is wrong).

images: @alanklement

3) No persona: Job stories instead of User stories

• Based on the "Job to Be Done" theory.

• Claims personas are reduced to demographics that don’t acknowledge causality.

• Decouple implementation with motivations and outcomes.

• Bring more context, situations and anxiety.

image: (c) 1993 Steve McConnell

... but fundametaly, are they so different?

image: @miss_embe

product maturity

cust

omer

bas

e/co

mpa

ny s

ize

ad-hoc persona

persona

JTBD

timeline

• These tools are complementary• Always keep an eye on your users/customers• Keep an eye on their enviroment too: it might change their goals• It doesn't matter what persona artifacts look like• Understand the forces that drive your users/customers• Modify your views and product accordingly

conclusion

www.cooper.com/journal/2014/04/barry-the-blog-post

asinthecity.com/2011/05/13/explaining-personas-used-in-ux-design----part-1/

asinthecity.com/2011/05/13/explaining-personas-used-in-ux-design----part-2/

www.udemy.com/ultimate-guide-to-ux/#/lecture/209590

www.jeffgothelf.com/blog/using-personas-for-executive-alignment/

jobstobedone.org/

insideintercom.io/using-job-stories-design-features-ui-ux/

Understanding the job by C.Christensen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84LymEs67Y

references