SpacePlace Personas
When designing an environment it is important to focus on meeting the needs and goals of the people who will use the environment. Field research allows a designer (or team of designers) to observe the behavior and goals of real people and use the data collected to abstract both universal and individual goals to keep in mind throughout the design process.
While it is important to abstract use cases and goals from potential users of the design, it can be difficult for designers to relate and empathize with a list of goals. Personas allow the abstracted use cases and goals to be "re-humanized" without the individual quirks that actual people bring into the design process. Personas also provide a check again the preferences an biases that the designer or design team may bring into the process.
Ideally personas are fully validated against research. A research validated persona provided gives necessary weight to design decisions, especially with stakeholders who would like to substitute their personal opinions into the design process. When it is not possible to do enough research to create a fact-based persona, a provisional or ad-hoc persona may be developed using reasonable assumptions. Although the hope should be that research will be done later to validate and improve the personas.
While it is important to abstract use cases and goals from potential users of the design, it can be difficult for designers to relate and empathize with a list of goals. Personas allow the abstracted use cases and goals to be "re-humanized" without the individual quirks that actual people bring into the design process. Personas also provide a check again the preferences an biases that the designer or design team may bring into the process.
Ideally personas are fully validated against research. A research validated persona provided gives necessary weight to design decisions, especially with stakeholders who would like to substitute their personal opinions into the design process. When it is not possible to do enough research to create a fact-based persona, a provisional or ad-hoc persona may be developed using reasonable assumptions. Although the hope should be that research will be done later to validate and improve the personas.