Re: Interview Questions for Persona Development

On Jul 1, 2009, at 1:55 PM, Andrea Richeson wrote:

> Please send your advice about what questions to ask (undergraduate
> business school students) when doing interviews for persona
> development. I hope to tease out user goals and behaviors.  Examples
> would help.

Hi Andrea,

Generically, I wrote these articles to talk about focus questions for  
this type of research:

Putting Context into Context
http://www.uie.com/articles/putting_context_into_context/

Focus Questions for Field Studies
http://is.gd/1lpB3

and Kate Gomoll & Ellen Story wrote this excellent resource that goes  
into depth on the subject:

The Field Study Handbook
http://www.uie.com/reports/field_study_handbook/

However, we've found that you're better off if you don't try to create  
generic questions, but instead focus on specific functionality or  
content that you're looking at, for instance, online admissions or  
course selection. Because personas work best when they describe  
behavioral differences, you're team will get the best results if you  
think in terms of the behaviors that relate to specific functionality.

Otherwise, you'll run the risk of creating generic personas which  
won't easily map to the individual data you've collected. And, in our  
research on successful persona implementations, most persona projects  
fail when the designers and developers don't adopt the personas  
because they are too generic and therefore can't really inform the  
design process adequately.

Hope that helps,

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jspool@... p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks  Twitter: @jmspool

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