Zombie Personas

Stefan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:00:44 +0000

This is by far the nerdiest episode we ever did, so fasten your seat belts. In his session at UXcamp, Tom said: "Personas – love ‘em or hate ‘em – you can’t not use ‘em. Either you have zombies, or you have living ones." In this recording of his session he talks about different kinds of zombies like Mirror Personas, Undead Personas, Unicorn Personas or Stupid User Personas. He gives advice on how to avoid these fellas and how to make good use of living personas during a project. As a bonus, Tom explains why 37signals doesn’t need personas at all.

Links for this episode:

Slides of Tom’s Zombie Persona talk
Another presentation by Tom icludes more info about the Target Persona Exercise and Story Cards
The book "About Face 2" by Alan Cooper (current edition is "About Face 3")
The book "The Inmates are running the Asylum", also by Alan Cooper
The New York Times article about the use of personas by the Ford Motor Company: "Before Creating the Car, Ford Designs the Driver"
37signals, makers of Basecamp and Backpack

Listen:

UX Café » story cards

Zombie Personas