One thing I didn’t get from the article: How do you determine who to bring in for “stakeholder interviews”? I’ve struggled with the best way to gather user research to determine who the true mainstream user is.

During the process of creating a user persona I’ve had difficulties with selecting the appropriate people to survey. Usually the loudest, easiest people to capture information from are far from the mainstream, everyday users. Instead, they’re the expert users, and the feedback they provide isn’t usually the best for creating a UX persona.

Again, great article thanks for taking the time to write it.

We’ve created a simple (free) web app to help people (particularly non-UXers) with creating personas (based on lean UX techniques). You can sign up here: http://www.spookstudio.com/personapp

You could say we’re scratching our own
itch, but obviously we’re hoping that other people find it useful.
We’ve had a good response so far so would love to get the feedback of
the design community to help ensure it’s a useful and relevant tool.

Some background to the idea here: http://welovelean.posterous.com/top-secret-dont-read

Hard to start off, but if you design for the end user using a persona as guidance, you will develop a more rigorous, pragmatic approach that will enhance your work.

Hard to start off, but if you design for the end user using a persona as guidance, you will develop a more rigorous, pragmatic approach that will enhance your work.

 All the information you need is out there if you ask the right questions or know where to look.

Good effort though!

 All the information you need is out there if you ask the right questions or know where to look.

Good effort though!