I remember being taught personas as being an embodiment of insights gathered from secondary data (of a sufficient size at that) when I was a student (at a low ranked university) but have more recently seen personas being taught (coincidently at a higher ranked university which is still highly regarded for Product Design) as this subjective "make someone up to justify your project" approach. This seems to be the common use of personas in Design education in the UK now and it is disappointing. Informed decisions and critical thinking are generally dead in Design education in the UK now anyway though.
As an example, I will never forget seeing a student's Major Project from a high ranked Russell group university at New Designers (2019) which was a kettle designed only to boil one mug of water to save energy wastage (without an accompanying mug). When I asked the student how the kettle accounts for different sizes of mugs he matter of factly replied that "every mug is the same volume, they just look different volumes due to the ratio of height to diameter." Really...? I have several sizes of mugs in my kitchen alone which I use depending on the size of tea/coffee I want! When I further went on to ask "Well, if you only want to boil 1 mug of water exactly then why don't you just fill the mug with water then pour that water into an empty kettle and you'll only boil as much as you need?", an extremely simple concept that does negates the need for a new design of kettle, he was obviously stumped. Yet this was a year-long major project at a Russell group university where he had been encouraged to pursue it by his supervisor.
So, why would he care that his entire concept was pointless and that its realisation actually result in a negative carbon footprint as opposed to a behavioural change when he went on to win a prize for it at the exhibition? When academic staff at top-ranked universities and so-called expert judges cannot see the blatant failure in critical thinking, I suppose it is unfair of me to question students' ability to think critically.
Sorry if this rant brings a downer on your Monday, but this issue extends beyond just personas as being discussed here.
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From: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Richard Herriott <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 24 May 2021 14:19
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Puzzle of Western Social Science
In response to Ken Friedman on personas:
I´ve just witnessed the use of imagined personas in a commercial design project. They were summoned from thin air as opposed to being aggregates of research data made accessible. It wasn’t only personas as a design tool that were mis-used in the design process.
This might be of interest:
Lene Nielsen and Kira Storgaard Hansen. 2014. Personas is applicable: a study on the use of personas in Denmark. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1665–1674. DOI:https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1145%2F2556288.2557080&data=04%7C01%7C%7C621c1ada11e04ba95af308d91eb6a25d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637574592013659268%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=5ESUP1TbA%2BhhUd%2BTc%2B5VBtSHlopWBZdfGFH8auEOEzw%3D&reserved=0
And
Long, F. (2009, May). Real or imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design. In Proceedings of the Irish Ergonomics Society annual conference (Vol. 14, pp. 1-10).
And
Tara Matthews, Tejinder Judge, and Steve Whittaker. 2012. How do designers and user experience professionals actually perceive and use personas? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1219–1228. DOI:https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1145%2F2207676.2208573&data=04%7C01%7C%7C621c1ada11e04ba95af308d91eb6a25d%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637574592013659268%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=uRS7PLWMUSM5sbJa%2B1OmZZdDYXi7h0%2Fh8uykRqb5BeI%3D&reserved=0
Perhaps there´s someone out there doing a PhD involving personas and design - I see an opportunity for a good review paper to bring the subject up to the present time.
Richard Herriott at DSKD, Denmark
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