RE: Are you using personas? (take II)

[Alan Bucher <bucherino -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Miller, Alan wrote:
>I don't make up a person. I pick out one I know will be using the
>product and consistently asks dumb questions, and write to
>him/her/it.

A persona doesn't *have to* be fictional. Sounds like you just
defined a persona right there. So write it down and flesh it out a
bit more.

>(Our prodicts are for in-house use and I personally know most of
>the users.) ... After a few interviews (and a few more beers), I
>got to know that audience pretty well, too. I just picked out a
>couple and wrote for them.

This has the danger of assuming that your audience is static and
heterogeneous. What happens when one of these people quits and
they bring on someone new? Is your doc suited for a novice? Did
you write for that person? Or did you only write for the
three-people-with-unique-personalities who existed at a single
point in time?

>weren't going to spend a lot of rate-payers' dollars for fancy
>processes. They just wanted good, understanable procedures--fast.

This is the standard "good, fast, cheap" requirement. As the
saying goes, "pick any two." :)

>>put a little investment in at the beginning to get a bigger
>>payoff later on.
>
>Only for those with deep pockets a short arms. :-{)

I get the sense that you think that you have to run down to the
local writing store and purchase personas for $50K each or
something. If you have a good sense of your audience, just spend
a day writing up the characteristics that you notice in your
users. Include any quirks that you feel might be relevant. Easy
stuff, generally. No deep pockets required.

>It's mostly common sense. I learned the techniques I use when I
>attended Naval Instructors' School (way back in ... well ... I'll
>say there was some unpleasantness going on in Southeast Asia and
>leave it at that). He just figured out a way to make a buck off
>of it.

Most formal business processes aren't invented out of
nothing. They're based on observations and codified into
easily-digestible and sharable rules. But do you make *no*
allowance for the possibility of new and worthwhile user-analysis
guidelines to have been developed in the last 40 years?

>What we're loosing sight of here is that although Award Winning
>Processes are very nice, most businesses don't want to (nor do
>they see the need to) spend "extra" money for those
>processes. While I no longer consult, I am still acutely aware of
>the economic realities. The client wants his purchase to be cheap
>and on time, good, too, if he can get it. World Class Processes
>and Fictional Personas aren't what he's paying for. He wants his
>manual. So write it for him.

Well, that depends on the client. Some think you're not doing any
work if they don't hear the sound of keys being struck. Others
understand that you're actually working even when you're staring
out the window in contemplation. If you're stuck with a sneering,
cigar-chomping taskmaster who wants to see words on paper, then I
agree that personas aren't for you. On the other hand, if your
boss smiles and nods when you say "give me a couple of days to
learn more about my audience and formalize a description of who
I'm writing for", then personas are a useful tool.

>"Chief Documentation Curmudgeon"

No kidding. :-P

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