[Irl-dean] A wee conundrum

[Mark Magennis]

Paul Walsh wrote:
> Where exactly did you come across this

It seems to be one of the fundamental principles of personas. In any  
'introduction to personas' you read, you will find a statement  
something like the following:

"If you try to design an interface to suit everyone, the result will  
not be good for anyone. But if you design with a specific real person  
in mind the interface will be optimal for them and, by extension,  
very good for a large number of other users."

A persona is a description of a specific user, with goals,  
characteristics and a social history. It is not a composite,  
aggregate or statistically average user, but a specific 'real' user.  
There may be more than one persona, if there are radically different  
kinds of users of equal importance. As far as I can see, the concept  
of personas, though seemingly simple, is often applied  
inappropriately or misunderstood. John Wood wrote something about  
this recently on the iQ Content blog, or maybe his own blog Cognitive- 
Friction. John, are you on the list?

I haven't thought deeply about this issue yet and I've never actively  
used personas (well once maybe). I thought I would throw it out for  
comment first and see if I could save some mental energy. But it  
seems to me that there shouldn't be a conflict and the explanation my  
have something to do with the fact that the meaning of Design for All  
is not the same as the meaning of "designing for everyone" in the  
above statement on personas. Design for All is about taking into  
account the range of sensory, cognitive and motor abilities of the  
user population. Designing for everyone in the anti-personas sense  
seems to be more about trying to account equally for every user's goals.

So my feeling is that this is a problem of language, but I suspect  
that some people are getting caught up in the language and  
misunderstanding the different meanings. I have seen articles that  
pit personas against Universal Design and conclude that Universal  
Design is a flawed ideal because it means designing for a composite  
'superuser' who combines all of the characteristics existing within  
the user population. I think this is a misunderstanding of Universal  
Design.

To sum up, maybe the perceived clash is to do with language and  
actually we are talking apples and pears. Personas are centred on  
goals and attempt to optimise for goal achievement, whereas Design  
for All is centred on abilities and attempts to cater for diversity  
of abilities. Two totally different and not incompatible aims.

Mark



On 25 Apr 2007, at 20:34, Paul Walsh, Segala wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Where exactly did you come across this - it's the first I've heard  
> of it and
> I'm Chair of the British Interactive Media Association. That of  
> course is
> not to say it's not a common belief in Ireland or the UK.
>
> Cheers
> Paul
>
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>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: irl-dean-admin at list.eeng.dcu.ie
> [mailto:irl-dean-admin at list.eeng.dcu.ie] On
>> Behalf Of Mark Magennis
>> Sent: 25 April 2007 16:26
>> To: Irl-DeAN
>> Subject: [Irl-dean] A wee conundrum
>>
>> I was just doing a bit of reading about interaction design and I
>> repeatedly came across the following statement about the value of
>> using personas:
>>
>> "defining and designing for a set of specific personas helps to avoid
>> the common practice of trying to design for all users".
>>
>> So is there a fundamental conflict between Design for All and good
>> interaction design practice? Or is Design for All not the same thing
>> as designing for all users?
>>
>> Discuss.
>>
>> Mark
>>
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Dr. Mark Magennis
Director of the Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT)
National Council for the Blind of Ireland
Whitworth Road, Dublin 9, Republic of Ireland
www.cfit.ie

mark.magennis at ncbi.ie   tel: +353 (0)71 914 7464