Personas
I just finished a talk at QAI Testrek on using personas. Again, I do a horrible job evaluating how my own talks go, but people asked a lot of good questions at the end, and I didn’t swear too many times, so I’ll call it a success.
The gist of the talk is that creating user personas is a great way to empathize with the customer and get inside their head (remember – you are not the customer!). I kicked off the talk with the A/B game I played at STAR East last year – this was a smaller audience, but I stumped the room again. I’m not sure how many more times I can get away with that before people catch on.
I mentioned that we use personas internally at Microsoft to talk about tester career paths. A generic form of those personas are located here if you haven’t seen them before.
That’s it for now – time for me to go see what else is happening here.
“emphasize” == “empathize”?
oops – fixing now…
I learn about “personas” (or personae) while serving as test lead on a Microsoft-led project. I instantly embraced the concept. I have found nothing better to define user behavior and requirements. I whole-heartedly embrace it!