More on personas. I guess it was inevitable.

After writing a <a href="http://www.adlininc.com/what_i_do/books_articles/2007/03/the_persona_lifecycle_keeping.php">gigantic book</a> on personas, you would think I'd be completely out of things to say on the topic. But no. There's more. Like, for example, the things I have to say about the book itself, and why it's so loooooong, and why that ended up being a good thing for most people.

When John and I started writing our book, we were sure that at any moment someone would beat us to the punch. We started writing it in 2001, after all, and by then Cooper's book had been out for almost two years. And a note about Cooper: we kept our project 'under the radar' until it was almost done, and then Cooper himself was invited to read the manuscript by our publisher. He suggested a few changes, which we happily made, and he was very supportive, even though our method is different than the Cooper method. He's an awesome, brilliant guy.

Anyhoo, back to 2001. Everyone was abuzz with personas excitement. That very excitement was really what led to our book. We conducted two workshops at UPA in 2000 and 2001, which were very well received, and we were approached by Diane Cerra from Morgan Kaufmann to write the book. She had heard about us from Jonathan Grudin, who is on MKP's advisory boards. The advisors keep their ears to the ground to let the publisher know who is doing good work in new areas, so the publisher can pounce and ask them to write books.

We laugh when we look back now. At that time we were also working with Holly Jamesen, who moved on to bigger and better things before we wrote the book. The three of us were absolutely sure it would only take us a few months to write the book. After all, we just needed to write up our notes. We had done so much work for our workshops that we already had the lifecycle model figured out. We bragged that we could do it in 6 to 9 months.

Ha.

Four years later, John and I were still slaving away every weekend at the Bellevue Public Library. We opened and closed the place. We had an organized scam to make sure we could get one of the study rooms for our own private use all day long. We had it down to a science.

Why did it take so long? And why write a blog about it taking so long? Well I'm glad you asked. It took so long because both of us had been involved in, or heard about, or seen, a persona effort that failed miserably. Many of them actually. And the more we dug and the more we worked, the more we realized that the devil is in the details in a major way when it comes to personas.

And that's why the lifecycle turns out to be so valuable. Because it's not just about creating personas. It's about keeping them alive and actually using them to do good work. And that's the hardest part.

There are lots of ways to create reasonable personas. In fact, most of my consulting business is based on the amazing value of ad-hoc personas, which do not require any research (gasp!) and can turn around a product strategy within a day or two. Using good, well-created personas is another thing entirely.

This is what I told myself, and still tell myself, when I think about the sheer volume of our volume. It became far larger than the 250-page guide we initially envisioned. It became a reference book that you can (and should) skim at first and return to when you get into a persona-based conundrum.

So here's how to use our book:

• Read the acknowledgments. They are both amusing and touching.
• Read Alan Cooper's intro. it's great. More on the whole Alan Cooper connection in another posting, coming soon.
• Skim chapter one. It's got great stuff on where personas came from, and some good ammo if you need to convince others in your company that personas are a valid method.
• Read chapter 2. It's short. And it sets up the whole lifecycle idea.
• Skim chapters 3-7. These are the meaty, how-to-actually-do-it chapters with instructions for practical methods...and suggestions for how to predict and avoid roadblocks.
• Flip through the invited chapters. They have wonderful insights, but they are outside of the main content of the book. The most readily practical chapters are the one on Reality and Design Mapping, which describes a method that I use all the time. If you are a marketer, check out the last chapter on personas and brand.
• Remember where things are. And remember that when a persona-related question burbles to the surface of your brain, there's likely to be an answer for you in the book.

So there. That's why the sucker is so freaking long. And that's how to use it. More on personas soon. Sneak peek:

It's a new persona era out there.

• People know what personas are, kinda.
• Many have tried to create them, or hired people to create them. Diatribe on hiring external folks to create your personas for you coming soon.
• Many have been totally psyched about personas and then completely crestfallen when the personas 'don't work.'
• Personas are still one of the best tools I know of, and I know of a lot of UX tools.
• The big secret is that the personas themselves don't really matter, and they don't even really need data to help organizations. They need data to help organizations build great products, but they don't need data to help the organizations themselves. And that's a huge deal. And heresy. And worth a longer discussion.
• There is hope.

Stay tuned.