Persona Quality Scale

Thank you to Steve Mulder for his recent post on Practical Personas about the persona quality scale idea I introduced in "Beyond Fake Personas."  I agree with Steve, it would be helpful for anyone who touches personas if we could do four things:  

1. Adopt a common vocabulary that indicates the personas’ rigor;
2. Always provide information about the number of users who sit behind the personas;
3. Note how we conducted the research and identify which persona components are quantitatively or qualitatively derived; and also
4. Offer up options for "improvement" if the personas had to be created quickly. 

At some point, persona creation methodology will be more standardized, with rigorous quantitative research a necessity.  I certainly appreciate Steve's efforts to develop and identify tools for a quantitative persona creation process.  In the meantime, and as he noted in his “Quantitative Personas: Not Always Necessary” post, I would not want to discourage potential persona developers.  A quality scale like the one I suggest seems to allow for both lighter-weight projects and deeper investments, while labeling each appropriately.

Comments

[Nick Trendov]

Brilliant work!

I apply the Persona construct like a mask.

Please consider that one person can pick up or discard multiple personae. Define a persona as a series of behaviours and build according to behaviours.

I have done this for strategy work, competitive intelligence, web interactions and other insight perspectives for 15 years.

www.scenario2.com and part of the Strategies for a Web Presence class that I teach at the University of Toronto.

I reference the site and classes for others who may benefit from this individual perspective on the building and use of personae.

My interest now is building simple tools to provide to practitioners so that they can work quickly and self-sufficiently.

Cheers,
Nick