On personas
Posted on November 14, 2007 by bradhinton
Mark Hurst has been keeping my mind busy with his regular newsletters from Good Experience. I really enjoy Mark’s passion for wanting to maximise the customer experience, something we should all adhere to in our communication and KM practices.
However, I wonder what Patrick Lambe and Arthur Shelley would make of this post on personas: Although referring to using personas for products rather than services, “They’re artificial, abstract, and fictitious” - and that’s just the light description!
Filed under: Archetypes, Marketing, Organisational behaviour
I think there’s an important distinction between emergent personas/archetypes that are constructed by a population out of their own narratives (which is where the archetypes we work with come from) and personas that are constructed artificially by researchers based on user research - which is the tradition this linked post seems to come from. There is more room for fictitiousness in the second, and greater potential distance from the target population. But I tend to agree with some of the comments to the post you link to… it’s a useful tool in the absence of constant input and feedback from a user audience - it doesn’t do the whole nine yards but it gets you a useful distance.
Patrick,
I think the distinction you make is important, althought personal narrative will still be context-based.
Regards,
Brad