Taking personas too far

“I don’t have to tell you that at Cooper, we love personasâ€â€how could we not?â€â€and we’re glad to see continued excitement about them. That said, although personas are essential design tools, we think some people may be losing sight of the fact that they’re just tools, and tools with a specific purpose, at that. Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of gold-plated hammersâ€â€unnecessarily elaborate communication about personasâ€â€and some fundamental misunderstandings about the relationships among research, personas, and scenarios.”