Thursday, May 14, 2009
Segmentation, Personas, and the Emperor's New Clothes:
Busting Myths in User Research
Speakers: Susan Dray, Ph.D., and David Siegel, Ph.D.
Details & Directions
Date & Time: Thursday, May 14, 2009, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Event Cost: $10 for members and students, $30 non-members (Cash/Check only at the door, ATM available)
RSVP: By 5:00 p.m. on Monday, May 11, 2009
Location: Minneapolis Technical & Community College - MCTC Gourmet Dining Room, 1501 Hennepin Avenue S, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Enter the Technology Building and follow signs for the Gourmet Dining Room - it's through the building, near the Cafeteria.
Directions & Parking:
- Directions: http://www.minneapolis.edu/directions.cfm
- Campus Maps http://www.minneapolis.edu/campusmaps/index.cfm
- Parking: available in the MCTC ramp across Hennepin Avenue - http://www.minneapolis.edu/parking.cfm
Payment
Online Pay via Paypal: (Credit Card or PayPal account)
- $10 - Members (UPA-MN Chapter Members only)
- $10 - Students
- $30 - Non Members
- Those who wish to join UPA MN and attend this event should use the following:
$70 - Event ($10) + New/Renewing Membership ($60)
Program
Quantitative market research and user-centered design field research have long had an uneasy and complex relationship. New developments in segmentation research and persona creation, and their growing adoption throughout organizations, will increase the urgency of bringing the two disciplines together.
In this talk, we will analyze an instructive case in which ethnographic research lead to challenging a "state of the art" quantitative user segmentation that was intended to unify all product planning, design, development, and marketing around a shared conceptual model of the universe of users. At the same time the case exposes some common fallacies in segmentation and use of personas. We will discuss:
- Specific problems in the reliability and validity of the measurements and statistical analyses that created the segmentation, with lessons applicable to segmentation research generally
- How we overcame political resistance to acknowledging these flaws
- How this case demonstrates why large sample research can actually be less powerful than small sample user research
- Insights regarding the uses and misuses of segmentation and personas
- An alternative model for integrating large sample, self-report market research with small sample, contextual field research.
Yes, we will discuss statistical issues, but please do not let this scare you off. You will come to understand these in a concrete hands-on manner, using...jelly beans! You will come away from this talk not only able to push the discussion between quantitative and qualitative methods to a much deeper level in your own organizations, and with insights about best practices that apply both to quantitative and qualitative research, but also with your sweet tooth satisfied.
About The Speakers
Susan Dray and David Siegel make up Dray & Associates, Inc., a Minneapolis-based user-centered design consulting firm with a world-wide reputation. Since 1993, they have conducted user research in the US and in 24 other countries to help guide strategic product planning and user-experience design. Their clients include firms such as AT&T, Best Buy, Cargill, eBay, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard, Ideo, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Thomson/RIA, and Xerox, to name but a few.
Susan and David are both very active as speakers and teachers. They have taught many workshops and tutorials on contextual user research at conferences in the US, Europe, and Asia and have published many book chapters and articles. They are the past editors of the Business Column of Interactions Magazine. David teaches a graduate seminar on Qualitative Field Research for User Centered Design, offered through a program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Susan is a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, was honored with the Life Time Service Award by SIGCHI, and was elected a Distinguished Engineer of the Association for Computing Machinery. She is currently serving as Director of Publications on the Board of Directors of the Usability Professionals Association.
Susan and David can be reached at:
+1 (612) 377-1980
info@dray.com
http://www.dray.com
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