Persona Non Grata
Steve Portigal
Portigal Consulting | steve@portigal.com
David Gartner
One recent morning I came into
my office and found a small
woman astride my desk. Well,
to be precise, it wasn’t an actual
woman. It was a cutout of a photograph of a doll representing an
archetypal customer—a persona.
My officemate had brought this
odd item back for me from the
CHI conference, and, knowing my
extreme discomfort with this sort
of tool, had left it for me as some
sort of a gift.
I took a closer look at the effigy
and recognized a familiar level of
suspended realism: think Barbie,
G.I. Joe, Robot Chicken. Indeed, the
dollmaker had outfitted her with
meticulously crafted accessories
such as a digital watch, ID badge,
CD-ROM, and Day-Timer.
And, frankly, it creeped the hell
out of me.
The company that produced
the persona is announcing to the
world that it regards its users as
mere dolls, as dehumanized, lifeless, plastic lumps that are without will, motion, action, or emotion until their master (creator?)
physically animates them. There is
powerful subtext here—does this
company manipulate its customers the way a benevolent yet stern
tween stages her tea party?
The back of the cardboard cutout has some smart text about the
type of user represented: her skill
level, experience, attitude, objectives, job priorities, and relationship to the products this company
makes. It also shows some thumbnail photos depicting the figure
through the course of her work-
day. Unfortunately, these images
evoke Team America World Police
more than they evoke any actual
empathy or (heaven forbid) convey
useful information.
This isn’t a critique of this particular (frightening) persona manifestation; this is a critique of personas and the inevitable impulse
to misuse them. Personas are
misused to maintain a “safe” distance from the people we design
for, manifesting contempt over
understanding, and creating the
facade of user-centeredness while
merely reinforcing who we want to
be designing for and selling to.
This impulse to distance oneself
from the customer while simultaneously claiming to embrace
the human element isn’t limited
to designers and to their use of
personas. Market segmentation is
often presented in a similarly limiting format. For instance, a client
recently approached us and outlined the different types of people
they wanted to know more about.
Each one came with its own infan-tilizing alliterative name, such as
Critical Incident Carl, Integrator
Ian, and so on. The ease with
which she spoke to us about real
people as if they were characters
from the Strawberry Shortcake
universe was distressing.
Just for fun, do a Google image
search for “personas” and you’ll
find many examples of the same
reduction of the human element.
Pay particular attention to the
visual representation of the persona: it’s either cartoonish clip art
or a beautiful yet bland, unchal-
lenging and ultimately unrealistic
stock photo.
The common representation
for personas—alliterative names
and generic imagery—reveals
their role in the Big Lie. What they
illustrate is not real, yet they are
often buttressed with the inclusion of “color” details—interesting
but manufactured factoids (i.e.,
media diet, favorite possessions,
marital status, etc.) that suggest
a real person lurks behind the
smiling stock photo. Like reality
television, the appeal comes from
the seduction of a sanitized form
of reality. And like reality television, personas are easier to deal
with than the inevitable messiness
of real people and real life. Using
personas takes away both the
responsibility and the necessity
of having to actually engage with
a customer and acknowledge who
they are.
Once defined, personas must be
updated, because culture is a moving target. The Associated Press
reported [“Shampoo Ads Highlight
Changing Image of Women
in Japan,” August 27, 2007] on
groundbreaking shampoo advertising in Japan that began to break
free of the traditional marketing
stereotypes, where female consumers were seen only as one of
three types: a housewife, an office
worker, or a schoolgirl. Shiseido
acknowledged the cultural changes that have swept through Japan,
and its new advertising has had a
tremendous impact on sales. Its
rejection of closely held models
of who its consumers were, while
