In June I gave a talk at the DIHNet event "Making a difference" one if the questions I was asked was, "what the difference between a persona (a design archetype) and a stereotype is".
I felt that the answer I gave was a little vague and would like to clarify the point (it's amazing what listening to Melvyn Bragg in the morning will do to you).
Whilst it is certainly possible to make a persona stereotypical this should only be in it's human qualities and in actual fact making a stereotypical user is not what persona's are about, a persona represent user patterns. Which is why considerably more effort should be expended in gathering your evidence (through user representatives or an ethnographic process) then formulating their personal qualities.
During a project at work, I created a persona for a system which generated a web site questionnaire, whist this example isn't perfect I hope it illustrates the points;
Winifred (Fred) Baker
She's content editor who likes to get on with the job, she just want to be given something to do, and left alone to get on with it.
Her main job is to create articles for the websites, occasionally however, she has to create questionnaires for the website so that the content team can see how well read their articles are.
All of the questionnaire she has to create will carry the same demographic related questions, asked for by public involvement. The rest of her questionnaire is populated by stock questions "how did you rate this article" or specific questions; such as in the recent article written on walking centres "how many walk-in centres are there in England" to find out if the key message had been delivered okay.
Due to the nature of the work she does she's an proficient web user, used to the common conventions of the internet. She uses the internet a lot a home, to book cinema tickets, and to use sites such as Amazon and eBay.
How I got there
I knew that anyone who used the system would do so infrequently - pattern 1 (implement in the system via a wizard type interface or some other tunnelling technique) I knew that our users were proficient web users and could used web conventions to best effect - pattern 2
I knew one of the business drivers of the site was to measure the effectiveness of the website follow-up questionnaires - stock questions
Summary
I hope this help to make personas clearer, my advice is;
- Primarily concentrate on gathering the best user patterns you can
- use sparse but "real" personal details