Interview with Pia Blumauer & Florian Tress, SKOPOS NOVA

UX Personas – useful or useless?

Personas can transform target groups into tangible human beings. How to work with them? What are the pros and cons? This is what SKOPOS NOVA is discussing – in this interview and in their session at Week of Market Research.

 

Your Week of Market Research event on May 12, at 11 am, is titled: “NOVA discusses – Personas are useless!” What can the participants expect?

Florian Tress: We deliver a polarizing discourse about personas. What is the argument for personas being useless?  What is against it? How should personas be applied to make sense?

► Sign up for the session here

 

What is the significance of personas in the UX context?

Pia Blumauer: Personas form the link between the developer and the target group. Who am I developing my product for? What is the composition of my target group? How many different user types does my product have? And how can I address their different needs in product development?

Florian Tress: That's right, personas are a heuristic that helps designers quickly build an empathic understanding of different usage contexts and requirements. Empathic means: you create a basis of identification that allows designers to quickly empathize with different users. Heuristic means: you can make quick decisions with personas because you don't look too closely. Especially in an agile environment, this speed is often very valuable, but that always comes with a leap of faith.

 

What makes the use of personas so problematic in your view?

Pia Blumauer: It is always problematic when personas are developed without collecting data. So the view to the target group is based on assumptions and not on a valid conclusion. So it can happen that you run in the ‘wrong direction’ and develop a product for a person who is not part of the target group at all. It can also happen that different personas ‘ghost’ around in a company, because everyone makes their own assumptions. So teams that actually have the goal to develop the perfect product may run in different directions. This makes development ineffective and inefficient.

 

The statement "Personas are useless" sounds quite provocative at first. Do you also see any advantages in personas?

Florian Tress: A navigaton system is better than a compass, but a compass is better than nothing. By analogy, one might say that proper user research is better than personas, but personas are still better than nothing. If you want to anchor the user perspective in the company – especially across the board – you would do well to create consistent points of reference for all employees. In the end, personas cannot replace user research, just as a compass cannot replace a navigaton system.

► Sign up now for the WoM event with Florian Tress and Pia Blumauer on May 12, at 11 am

 

Do you think that the concept of personas needs to be fundamentally reconsidered, or is the field of UX an exception here?

Pia Blumauer: From my point of view, it doesn't have to be fundamentally reconsidered, but it should be handled a bit more flexibly, according to the motto: A beginning is better than no beginning. Even if there was no valid data basis or elaborate factor analysis beforehand, personas should be worked with. This way, they fit better into the more agile UX world.

 

Are there suitable alternative approaches to transforming a target group into a tangible number of people?

Florian Tress: Personas themselves are not a uniform concept. There are thousands of paths that lead to Rome: from statistical modeling in corporate dashboards to qualitative personas that function rather anecdotally. I don't think we need to look for alternative approaches; personas can already do what they are supposed to do.

 

What goal are you pursuing with your panel discussion? And who should not miss the event?

Pia Blumauer: The discussion round should be a stimulating exchange for the viewers. No one should miss this, because personas are a common tool in the development process and should, like all other tools, always be critically questioned and improved.

 

And now for something completely different: how is the new Skopos Nova office in Munich doing?

Florian Tress: The office has really taken off and we have our hands full. That's why we are currently expanding the team significantly and are therefore already looking for a larger office space.

Pia Blumauer: Great, of course. It's fun to exchange Bavarian phrases and idioms with our Munich teammates. In addition, our location in Munich is a strong partner and local contact for all our customers in the south.

ABOUT

Pia Blumauer has been a UX researcher for 5 years and focuses on qualitative methods of UX research. As a usability expert, she supports clients in the design of (mostly) digital interfaces so that users can use them optimally. She also facilitates workshops and conducts collaborative workshops as part of a user-centred design process.

Florian Tress is a Senior UX Researcher at SKOPOS NOVA in Munich and has been working in online research for over ten years. He is constantly on the lookout for new trends and current developments. He is particularly interested in methodological issues and human-machine interaction.

The interview was originally published in German on marktforschung.de – here