I am currently creating personas for a new project. I don't have any user data except for the use cases provided by the stakeholder.I did competitive analysis and identified few interaction issues(Poor UX) in other products.Is it okay to go head with the creation of personas with this data, as I can not contact any of the actual users for interviews.
2 Answers
Alan Cooper, the inventor of Personas, says while Provisional personas are not ideal there may be valid reasons why you cannot do the research that is needed to create them (cost, time, etc), however they still have some value and can help you test assumptions. This is all detailed in his book 'About Face 3' and he dedicates a whole Chapter 5 to the subject of Personas and the 7 steps you should go through to create them.
No.
That's the honest answer. What you describe is not a real persona.
In the real world, you aren't the first to be forced into cutting corners. To underscore the lack of real world research, an honest person would call these "provisional personas". That also has the benefit of implying that they should be updated as soon as real research is viable.
From the link above:
Provisional personas (AKA ad-hoc personas, or proto-personas) sound like a recipe for disaster. They are based on little or no research, but rely on intuition and company beliefs—everything that can lead to a pointless persona. Many user experience professionals hate even the thought of them.
And yet – when done and used properly – they can serve a purpose.
answered Jun 17, 2016 at 5:49
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Okay I will drop the idea of creating the persona at this stage. Also I would like to know if its good to go directly to Low- res prototyping once I have set the workflow (as I already have the use cases). Thanks for your quick response!– Kannan RJun 17, 2016 at 6:08
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