lanehalley

 A friend recently asked me:

"...the students have done some user research and we've begun modeling using behavioral variables, etc. For a kitchen appliance (recipe finder, shopping list builder, etc.) or similar household device, I wonder if you would ever have a "couple" as the primary persona, for the purposes of the persona description."

Good question! This is a tricky aspect of persona creation. When designing a consumer product, you often have to consider a household full of people who will interact with the solution you're designing. When I've encountered this problem myself, I've never created a "couple" persona. Instead, I've found these alternatives to be more useful:

- One persona, with "characters" in the story to provide context
- Two personas in different households
- Two personas in the same household (rare)

I'd only place two personas in the same household if I was trying to express an important interaction between them, for example, how a mom and kid would use a kitchen appliance very differently. In this case, the dad would be a character. In writing the persona description I'd start by talking about "The Miller Family," name all three and describe the household shopping, cooking and eating behaviors. Then I'd go into more detail about the perspectives and needs of the mom "Mary Miller" and the kid "Benjamin Miller." Mary's husband Curtis would appear in the overall household part, but wouldn't have as much detail, and would not be the "star" of design scenarios the way the other two would.

Of course, the behavioral patterns you discover in your research, and the business requirements of the product you're designing will determine the correct solution for your situation.

 

This article from Bill Kroyer is a bit outside the IxD field, but there are some interesting parallels to some of the struggles we experience between design and development.

…the master is the vision and the servant is the technology.

There has been this battle ever since I've seen these two working together in Tron. It's natural, because much of the work we do is technology based; it's also natural that the toolmakers believe that they are the best ones to use them, but it doesn't work that way. You go to hear Rubinstein play, not the guy who made the piano.

It's one of those things you have to be sensitive about, because you have to appreciate the skill of the person who knows how to use the technology. But there has to be a level of judgment about their ability to use it with artistic vision.”

Technology leads artists to cope in many different ways. One is by learning how to use the tools...