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Reviewer: Alan M Arnfeld

Personas are an essential tool in the development of products and services. This is true not only on the Web, but also across the entire portfolio, online or offline. For many practitioners, the use of personas has appeared to be somewhat difficult to grasp—especially for those not involved in user experience and design or marketing. This book provides an accessible, comprehensive, and easy-to-read guide on what personas can be used for, how to create them, and, very crucially, how to sell them to others. The book is organized into three parts: an introduction to personas, how to create personas, and how to use personas practically. In Part 1, Mulder and Yaar set the scene for some of the benefits of using personas. The authors send a clear and strong message that the people in charge of creating new products and services are not the users, and that they must focus on the goals of the users. This is, of course, at the heart of user-centered design, but it is always worthwhile to repeat in a book with a broad target audience. In Part 2, several methods for creating personas are described. Three approaches are highlighted: qualitative, quantitative, and a combined approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This part of the book focuses on the importance of considering segmentation, and breaking down the personas into a sensible and manageable number of chunks that can subsequently be developed into personas. A reader coming to this area for the first time could use the information about qualitative methods and make an attempt at personas with varying results (depending on his or her skill level). However, the quantitative methods described require more technical and statistical expertise, which may be a barrier for some people. Mulder highlights the points in the process that may require the services of a statistician. Unfortunately, not everyone who wishes to create personas will have the statistical knowledge required, or access to a professional statistician. This section of the book could be improved by providing more detail on the statistical methods introduced, or it could provide a thorough set of further reading and training resources so that readers could develop a personal greater understanding. Part 3, the final section, discusses the crucial topic of how to use the personas. This part of the book is particularly interesting. It describes some fairly common approaches to using personas, and how they can be used to support user experience, design, and interaction design. It also introduces some new concepts that are less understood. Mulder and Yaar provide detailed examples of how to maintain personas after the initial launch, and how to extend their use within all conversations inside an organization. If this can be achieved on a regular basis, across different organizations, it will allow organizations to extract maximum value from the development of personas. Throughout the book, Mulder and Yaar provide many real-world examples, lists of tips (such as questions to ask during interviews), and examples of how personas can be presented. These additions make the book a very practical read. Online Computing Reviews Service