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The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) (Interactive Technologies)
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The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) (Interactive Technologies) |
Author: John Pruitt
Published: 2006-04-24 |
List price: $70.95
Our price: $64.08
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: November 20th, 2008 08:50:10 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Loads of information...get ready to extend your process
This book is full of handy processes. I have to say, you MUST be dedicated to building personas...and so does your organization. If you're just venturing into the space, you certainly find out what's possible.
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br /If this concept is new to your organization, I would recommend finding a way to slowly introduce this process. I am certainly a believer in personas, but don't think you need the whole process to reap 80% of the benefit of personas.
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br /If your org already believes in personas and you have executive sponsorship, the content could really benefit you to launch an entire persona process.
 One of the best practitioners books I've read for a long time
Lately I've been disappointed in many of the so called practitioners books that have crossed my desk, they have been very light on detail, aimed at the novice and do not have enough detail for the experienced professional. This book was different.
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br /Written in a way that makes it accessible to the novice, it is a book that begs to be read from cover to cover. Skimming it just makes you realise that there is so much information in it that you will have to allocate serious time to it. It is full of helpful suggestions, ideas and quotes from people using personas in the field. Importantly it also provides anecdotes of what didn't work for people. It provides plenty of concrete suggestions to implementing personas, and guides you through the lifecycle of them rather than just saying here they are, just use them.
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br /All in all this is a very practical book, written by people experienced in the field, with some great chapters by other experts eg Whitney Queesenberry. I thoroughly recommend it.
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br /Colleen
Theory, Case Studies and Practice
Finally, someone has produced a 'definitive guide' to personas.
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br /I really liked Cooper's idea of personas when I first came across it. In human factors, we use varying techniques of modelling users but this one seemed to stand above the rest due to its exploitation of our affinity with stories.
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br /Unfortunately, over the years I've noticed personas being used in a haphazard fashion in industry - and for good reason. Practitioners had very little in the way of good references, how-tos or theory behind how to properly implement personas. Well, this book neatly solves all those problems in one shot. Pruitt and Adlin have put together an impressive tome that can be used either as a spot reference, or a definitive guide to implementing personas effectively. I highly recommend it.
One of THE HCI Resource Books for Your Shelf
I should admit my bias up front. There are those who like little short books that make one point and make it over and over. There are many popular books in our field that are like that, filled with stories that all basically make the same point and are just a couple of hundred pages long. They are heavy on fun reading and pithy quotes, and light on meat. If my company doesn't buy them for me, I usually like to borrow these, read the first chapter and last chapter and skim the rest.
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br /The Persona Lifecycle is the other kind of book. It is a book that is large because it is packed with information and ideas. It is big, because the topic is big. It is organized in a way that lets you take it down from the shelf and just read the bits that are relevant to the problem you have at the time. Are you trying to figure out how to get started? Are you trying to figure out how to engage your organization in the effort, and in user-centered design through the use of personas? Are you trying to figure out how to make your personas more effective? Are you trying to figure out how to drive more business value out of them? There is something for every situation.
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br /There isn't just one way to get value from personas, and so a checklist or cookbook isn't appropriate. What are appropriate are principles that can be used to figure out an approach for a particular context, and lots of examples.
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br /Furthermore, it is a book that doesn't just live in the world of theory, or pontificating about a point of view in order to justify a consulting business. It is a book that is filled with practical advice and the experiences of those who are using personas in their jobs.
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br /This is a must-have resource for the HCI professional's shelf.
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 The authors missed the boat. One of the few books I cannot recommend.
(I've been doing personas since 2000, right after reading Cooper's Inmates are Running the Asylum).
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br /I had great expectations for this book, but was sadly disappointed. There are a few good "models" in this book, like the fact that it uses a single case study carried through the book to continually try and tie things together. However, the book is a very difficult 700pp read. They've thrown in everything including the kitchen sink in this book, which is not a good thing.
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br /They have stories from the field, handy details, bright ideas, the G4K case study - all woven throughout the writing of the book. It breaks to book up too much and makes it less useful.
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br /There's an entire chapter on reality maps. They don't have anything to do with personas, really. They're a great tool, kind of like the Task Analysis grid [...], but I wouldn't put that in a personas book.
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br /They should have created some personas for the book to guide their design and limit the amount of writing they did. The writing style isn't engaging. The interior design of the book is confusing. They have a number of different elements threaded through the book, which dissects the pages up too much, making it more difficult to read.
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br /Personally, they could have just stuck with the chapters from their contributing authors and had a better book.
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br /This was very disheartening for me, as I was really looking forward to this book. However, of the 300+ books on my shelf, this is one that I simply could not recommend.
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br /[...]. The authors really missed the boat here. This is not a how-to book. It is very thorough, too thorough. They seemed to take everything related to personas and try and pack it into one book. The execution simply missed the mark.
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