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.

 

Andrew Hinton has an interesting post about Personas and the Role of Design Documentation.

"Whenever orthodoxy seems to be going awry, you can either reject it, or try to understand it in a new light. And one way to do the latter is to look into its history and understand where it came from to begin with—as is the case with so much dogma, there is often a great original idea that, over time, became codified into ritual, losing much of the original context."

Word.

He also has this interesting note about the Charmr from Adaptive Path

"One thing a couple of the presenters said really struck me—they said they found themselves having nightmares that they’d been diagnosed with diabetes, and had to manage these medical devices for the rest of their lives. Just think—immersing yourself in your user’s experience to the point that you start having their dreams."

Also true. In my projects, I often am so deeply involved in the personas that I dream conversations with them.