Thirty7 Signals doesn't use PersonA-s. We use ourselves... Personas don't talk back... Personas aren't pressed for time. I think that if you write rich and focused-enough personas, you can role-play that kinda stuff. I think it's too easy to believe you're designing for people like yourself, and miss where those other people diverge from your own ConText. So if you can't design something for yourself, design something for someone you know. Get that person or people involved in your project early on. That's a great idea - the closer you can get to having an Onsite Customer the better off you are.

Back in 2005 Dan Saffer noted that PersonA-s are generally done wrong. The main cause of this mess is that half of the personas out there are entirely made up, with no user research to back them. In most cases, no one on the design team has talked directly to users to find out who they are, so designers come up with an idea of a user type. The resulting personas are like the designer's imaginary friends. Without any research to back assumptions, it's easy to end up with a product built for what designers think the users are like, rather than what the users really are like... The differences between personas must be based on these deeper issues - what people do (actions or projected actions), and why they do them (goals and motivations) - and not as much on who people are. It's not that knowing who people are isn't important, it just isn't as important for personas.

Jan'2008: Peter Merholz defends them again. Well, if personas suck, how do I make sense of my user research? How do I build empathy across a product team?

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