Personas

Our discussion in class about different personas was really interesting. Our minds seem to want to categorize ideas and things as a means of simplifying data. It is odd that we do that with complex human beings in order to create simplicity and I do think it undermines the creative human mind, but I understand why we do this. We talked about the "soccer mom" and "joe the plumber" and in class, we are organizing professors into different types. I think that this is all good and well, but probably the cheapest way of organizing humans. In fact, if we thought through it more completely, I am sure we could argue for or against some of the professors in the different categories we placed them in. In other words, this is a subjective way of trying to organize information objectively and I cannot imagine that that is really how it is done in innovation and design. I am looking forward to attending class today to see if we discuss any of these points of view!!

(The image above is a study done on Cell Phone user personas)