This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
The Persona Lifecycle
I went to a presentation today on user personas by Tamara Adlin. Great presenter, she was very funny (looking at her websites I see two of her recent publications were Are Your Corporate Underpants Showing? and Let Them Pee - which is right at the level of my sense humor). She had to deal with the Stata center's faulty projection system and wound up presenting from a chair with her lap top facing us in her lap, the audience gathered around her in a small circle. It was like preschool, quite fun. Luckily the audience was small, since there is quite gale blowing through Boston.
I've always had a hard time working with persona's. I have some tacked on my cubicle wall, but I still tend to work on a persona that is in roughly formed in my mind after several interviews with the people who will use our software. In large projects I have spent time contributing to the creation of personas only to see them have little influence over the actual design process.
I didn't have the breakthrough I'd hope for, where I would say "A ha! Now that I know this our whole team will embrace personas, refer to them by name and let their imaginary yet prescient needs drive our our work." But I did see some good strategies for bringing the personas into requirements and design work.
I chatted with Jean Foster after the session and we may give personas another go in helping us plan for stage two of Stellar Images (in stage two we'll let people take all those images they found and turn them into class room presentations). Maybe we'll pick up Tamara's book and really make it work this time.