Disentangling some ideas about personas

I've been reading a lot of debates and discussions around personas lately—whether they're an effective tool in interface design or not, and what is the right way to create them. I think when people write about personas they often blur together two ideas that are in fact separate. Personas are really a technique for synthesizing research data and presenting it in a sticky way. This is separate from the research methods used to gather the data.

Normally we use techniques like field studies, site visits and other qualitative research methods to gather data about how our users will interact with our products, what their needs and goals are, the environment they work in, etc. But there's no reason why findings from this sort of research need to be presented as personas. They could be presented in a number of other ways depending on the audience, purpose, skills of team members, etc.

The advantage of personas is that they present information in way that is clear, memorable, and actionable. Here's the important thing: you would get these same benefits regardless of the source of the information behind the personas. Normally people associate personas with the types of research mentioned above in order to get accurate or correct information about users, but getting correct information is really separate from presenting information in an effective way. Often people advocate for personas on the grounds that they are a good antidote for the elastic user and the "featuritis" that results from a lack of clear focus during design and development—but you get the benefits of increased focus regardless of whether the personas are backed by thorough qualitative research or by the hunches of front line staff.

So when people argue in favor of personas they're often really arguing several separate things:

1. That a certain type of information about users is needed to develop good products (namely information about goals, needs, attitudes, etc.)
2. That a certain type of (usually qualitative) research is the best way to obtain that information
3. That personas are the best way to synthesize the information after it's obtained and present it to the team working on designing and developing the product

Someone could reasonably object to any one of these points. By blurring them together under the concept of personas, it makes it difficult to understand that objection. It also makes persona adoption an all-or-nothing sort of thing, which may be harder to implement in an organization, and may also lead to missed opportunities (for example, an organization might miss out on the benefits of qualitative research because it is turned off by the idea of presenting that research as a persona).