Since Allan Cooper presented the Persona methodology to the software development world, companies have adopted the technique, to a fault. While personas are supposed to be "made up" they are not supposed to be pulled out of thin air and we were surprised to learn that many practitioners these days do just that. Background research into the users and product domain needs to be done to gain an understanding of the persona's technical expertise and motivating factors. Why do over 50% of companies cut costs by not taking the time to do this initial critical research? Wouldn't it just be better not to have personas? Last year Perforce hired Cooper for a new project and we only gave them 1 week to do initial research even though they had asked for more. They were still able to do the research and gave us personas before design started. We'll show entertaining Persona case studies where quick guerrilla research following initial Persona hypothesis has yielded vital changes to assumptions.

1. Did I Pull That
Persona Out of My
You Know What
Nellie LeMonier David Drucker
Perforce Software Perforce Software
UX Design UX Design

2. {Abridged Slide Deck
for SXSW 2013}
Nellie LeMonier David Drucker
Perforce Software Perforce Software
UX Design UX Design

3. Case Study #1: Personas without research
Larry Moe Curly
User Sys Admin Content Manager
The dev team made these up

4. Personas are used to
• Unite product team
• Reduce conjecture
• Build the product with the right
requirements

5. Personas created from
• Field studies
• Domain research
• User observation
• Mental model and behavior

6. Personas are made up
• An initial hypothesis can be made of the
roles
• The persona should not remain a
hypothesis

7. Case Study:
Content Management
System (CMS)
• Developers came up with the personas
• No research was done to create these

8. CMS Personas – Take 1
Larry Moe Curly
The dev team made these up

9. CMS Personas – Take 1
What was R I G H T with Larry, Moe and Curly ?
-United the team, gave them a common
conversation
-Tasks for personas were defined

10. CMS Personas – Take 1
What was W R O N G with Larry, Moe and Curly ?
-No motivating factors defined
-No domain expertise defined
-Did not reduce conjecture
-Curly couldn’t type and his voice to speech skills
were lacking

11. CMS Personas – Take 2
1st: Larry, Moe and Curly were retired (RIP)
2nd: Research domain through internal website
manager interviewed. Roles & tasks determined.
(1 day)
3rd: Research specific roles through interviews
(1 week)
4th. Synthesize into new Personas
(1 week)

12. CMS Personas – Take 2
Aaron Maya Ed
Front End Developer Content Editor Site Administrator

13. Take 2
Conclusions
1. Motivations are
clear
2. Tasks are defined
3. Expertise known
4. Unifies product
team

14. Next Case Study
{ Sneak Peek }
“Vera” made a cameo
appearance as one of our
Personas

15. Thanks for reading and we hope to
get your vote.
“Whishing it was South-by every day”
@NellieLeMonier David Drucker