
Why Startups Should Create Customer Personas  - buckpost
http://www.markevanstech.com/2013/05/21/personas/
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rubinelli
Sorry folks, but I'll have to post the middlebrow dismissal: personas can be
dangerous. All those well-designed Microsoft products that nobody used? You
can almost always reverse-engineer the personas they catered to.

If you are building for a specific customer, you run the risk of overfitting
for that customer, but at least you know _someone_ will pay for that.

~~~
eflowers
Just like any development or UX tool, personas can be dangerous or super
effective. It has nothing to do with the concept of personas, it's just how
people choose to research and use them. The intent isn't to design for a
specific customer, it's to give the UX and development teams a common user
reference point to validate their assumptions against through user interviews
and continued research, iterating on the personas.

I'm sure you know about Alan Cooper's books, but another that I've found helps
maximize the benefit, and minimize the danger, of personas is Tamara Adlin's
"The Persona Lifecycle" : [http://www.amazon.com/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-
Interacti...](http://www.amazon.com/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-Interactive-
Technologies/dp/0125662513)

Plus, Microsoft isn't exactly known for it's effective UX.

~~~
rubinelli
Yeah, personas are a good tool for refining your product once you know your
market, but a startup by definition is still exploring. You can run extensive
interviews and create a great set of personas today, then pivot into a
completely different market and throw away all this work next week. Or create
profiles based on what people say (which is different from what people do),
build your product, and realize nobody cares.

~~~
eflowers
Creating personas on what people say is bad UX, and not a flaw in personas.
Knowing what a user behavior based interview/persona is the job of whoever is
in charge of the startups UX process.

I don't see how you can "know your market" without some sort of idea on who
your user is, what their behaviors are, and have some sort of empathy with
them.

Regarding pivoting and "throwing out" the work... each discipline of a team
would do that. That's your UX designers job, just like a programmer would have
to throw away code or a graphic artist would throw away design collateral for
the new direction.

The "realize nobody cares" is exactly what good UX personas prevent. I guess
if a startup doesn't know how to incorporate or conduct good UX you could run
into those problems.

I guess I just don't agree with your premise. You're basically describing what
happens when something goes wrong with your UX and personas - so of course
your argument makes sense since you're highlighting a worst case scenario. But
you're neglecting to acknowledge that every day, many startups effectively use
and get tremendous value from personas and UX, and you can't do real UX
without personas.

~~~
rubinelli
I guess I'm letting my engineering background show, but I think you have to
nail down the problem before you start to refine the solution. You have
certainly seen people put up with absolutely horrendous interfaces, because
_they got the job done._

Sometimes, you are entering an established market in which _the UX is the
problem_ , and in that case, focusing on that right out of the gate makes
sense.

~~~
eflowers
I can see what you're saying, and I don't want to belabor it to death. But as
the UX guy, a persona is what nails down the problem before ever coming to a
solution.

Maybe we're talking about different types of personas. The question I'd ask
from the very beginning is "who are we building this for and what problem is
it going to solve?" And adding a little definition to the "who" and what
problem they have is the first step in building anything, and making sure you
don't waste time.

In the end, from day 1, from the first utterance of what your startup is
about, you're building something for a human. Without empathy, you can't build
the right product. And you can't empathize without personas. It's not even
really a question of user experience, or user interface, it's just about
nailing down the human problem.

------
andrew_wc_brown
specificity is important for attracting eyeballs but this article doesn't show
you an affective way of doing it.

Check out Eben Pagan Summit videos or or Dane Maxwell interview on Mixergy.
They have a detailed breakdown on how to attract leads, and target your market
with success.

~~~
thoughtcriminal
The article is a lead-in to an app that helps you create personas.

I personally believe in the effectiveness of personas, but they can take a lot
of time to do right, which is why I think there is a market for this type of
SaaS.

