Hacker News Reader

Comment by cal5k | Hacker News Reader

I find that a lot of articles/talks by designers make such declarative statements... "Design for PEOPLE, not USERS!". Lots of time spent on semantics.

Even basic "user personas", however, attempt to capture the "not just a user" dimensions, and a decent business plan needs to answer questions like "What's in it for me? How is it better than <substitute x>?"

View on HN

No, I think it's a reasonable statement. It's like brutalist architecture. It functions well as a building (It encloses a space, allows entry and exit, and the roof doesn't leak), but it's still a space that's inhuman. Cold. It would be a fine space for robots, but it's too sterile for humans to feel at home.

So the idea isn't inherently nonsense. (Any particular claims as to the right ways to apply it to software, on the other hand...)

Yes, and a lot of us marketers are scratching our heads when designers talk about "human-centric design" (i.e. making products by thinking about what people want, what marketers have been doing forever) as if it had really profound and new insights. But it's certainly a good approach so, it's worth promoting.

Marketing personas are often not aligned with UX personeas, not due to a mistake but due to the fact that the two functions operate in different domains

The customer for dog food is not the dog, for example

And the user of dog food isn't the dog either, believe it or not. Dog food is designed for dog owners, not dogs. Everything is designed for humans.

Just like you don’t advertise dog food to dogs.

Indeed, the primary criterion in dog food design is smell and consistency of output. #2 is cost — how can you tweak ingredients as to legally be allowed to label it “lamb dinner” at lowest cost

Marketing and UX Personas can be the same thing, the problem is that they are often defined for completely different touch points ( TV vs. Software) so the requirements are different and the results are different. Mostly this is confusing for everybody, an additional factor is that most UX teams know how to work with personas and how to develop them. But most ad agencies and marketing departments don’t. This makes their personas often rather weird and unhelpful. It’s often a target group personified ( the whole target group).

The goal is different though. In marketing the goal is "convince them to buy" or simply "get eyeballs." It's almost hostile to the users at times.

The goal of UX is to help them get something done and make them happy. So while the techniques may share ground, the intent is completely different (and new).

That's confusing marketing with a subset of it (promotion/advertising).

Cmon, the goal of UX is not to make anyone “happy”, it’s to get people to be satisfied so that they come back and spend more money. You can justify what you do any way you like, let it feel good, but don’t try to pretend you are not just a cog in the machine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com