Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counter-intuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions. Read More…
Elizabeth Bacon — Chief Design Officer of Devise, IxDA Vice President and Director — presented a webinar thru Catalyze called “Death to Personas! Long Live Personas!“: Personas are way of describing users as fictitious individuals. As the use of personas has spread, however, they have encountered criticism.
This presentation tackles some common concerns about personas, including whether they are: fluffy; expensive to create; non-actionable; limiting; or counterproductive for innovation; some of these misconceptions are addressed and best practices are shared for leveraging personas during the research and design process.
Here is the full set of questions posed by attendees, with answers provided by Elizabeth Bacon:
[Q] Are there generic personas available for designers (web beginner, cardiologist, small business owner, etc)?
[Liz] I’m not aware of any resources for ‘generic personas’ and I’m definitely ambivalent about the concept. Although there are some widely-shared behaviors and qualities of people that get captured with personas, particularly with respect to consumer-oriented design problems, it is very important that personas be researched and created within the context of a specific domain. You don’t necessarily need a very specific design problem (for I have found that personas often have longevity above and beyond the initial project scope), but you really do want to focus your field research within a particular domain in order to identify and capture the most pertinent patterns of behaviors and human qualities that are needed for design.
[Q] Can you describe how personas and use case actors differs? Seems like they are very similar.
[Liz] My deepest experience with use case actors was in the context of an employer’s application of Alistair Cockburn’s use case methods. Although the use case model created in this environment was able to absorb the idea that a given Actor was an Electrophysiologist persona named Dr. Langston, or a Sales Rep persona named Brad Shore, there was no room in the use case documents themselves for the biography or other humanizing aspects of the personas that were so important for design decisions. However, if you can imbue use case actors with the key qualities of personas (i.e., behaviors, attitudes & goals) then more power to you! Go forth with richer, human use case actors that improve the whole team’s efforts!
[Q] How do you educate the team on the difference between user personas and marketing/buyer personas?
[Liz] There’s been lots of discussion lately about buyer personas, which is a marketing-oriented type of persona. It seems direct enough to state: the buyer persona will be purchasing the product while the user persona will be using the product, and these two people are not always the same person. Perhaps the latter point is most difficult to convey, especially if your marketing team works diligently to characterize their buyers but the engineering team may not have the same focus on characterizing their users. If your marketing department has had success with applying buyer personas in defining their product messaging, then probably this success could be a helpful wedge to introduce the idea of researching and developing *user* personas for the purpose of defining products.
As part of its on-going commitment to support the practice of sustainable design and green building in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, Autodesk announced two acquisitions to improve building performance analysis in the building information modeling (BIM) process.
Autodesk has acquired substantially all the assets related to the Ecotect software tools for conceptual building performance analysis from both Square One Research Ltd. and Dr. Andrew Marsh.
Autodesk also announced that it has completed the acquisition of substantially all the assets of Green Building Studio, Inc., a provider of web-based whole building energy, water and carbon-emission analysis software.
Buildings are a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, so to combat climate change it is critical for the building industry to rapidly adopt sustainable design practices that will lead to buildings which are appreciably more efficient and eventually carbon neutral, said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, Autodesk AEC solutions. The addition of these tools to our technology portfolio will help make it easier for architects, engineers and designers to understand the impact of their design decisions on building performance earlier in the design process so they can optimize for reduced environmental impact.
The acquisitions of Ecotect and the Green Building Studio assets will support Autodesk’s vision to deliver software that enables architects and engineers to design more sustainable projects. With improved building performance analysis capabilities, Autodesk will be uniquely positioned to offer a comprehensive suite of software solutions for sustainable design and analysis, enabling a BIM process that can facilitate cost-effective design and delivery of high-performing, resource-efficient buildings and infrastructure.
Square One Research, Ltd. and Dr. Andrew Marsh, creator of the Ecotect environmental design and analysis tools, are based in Isle of Man. The Ecotect tools can measure how fundamental criteria, such as solar, thermal, shading, lighting, and airflow, will affect building performance in the conceptual and detailed phases of design. Their capability to forecast building performance over time better equips architects and engineers to deliver more energy efficient and sustainable building designs.
Square One Research and Autodesk share a commitment to using technology to make the design and construction of sustainable, high-performance buildings easier and more efficient, said Dr. Andrew J. Marsh, Co-Founder and Head of Research & Development, Square One Research. We are pleased to join Autodesk and look forward to helping develop and deliver simple and effective building performance analysis to architects and engineers around the world.
The Autodesk Green Building Studio analysis tools provide improved design insight through whole building energy, water and carbon-emission analysis, helping architects and designers to maximize building economic and environmental performance. The tools are compatible with Autodesk design software as well as software from other industry providers through the Green Building XML (gbXML) schema and can now be directly accessed from within the Revit platform for BIM with a new plug-in now available for download.
About a year and a half ago, when Dan Saffer — former experience design director of Adaptive Path and founder of Kicker Studio — first started thinking about the material that would eventually become “UX Intensive: Interaction Design“, he wondered what it was that helped designers make those leaps of faith, the great guesses, that we have to make on projects. So he came up with this talk, “How to Make Good Design Decisions“.
Dan Saffer was an experience design director for Adaptive Path until 1998. An international speaker and author, his writing on design has appeared in BusinessWeek and many online publications. His acclaimed book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (VOICES)
Dan is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.
