As it turns out, many organizations just don’t have a need for personas to drive design decisions, because most of their design needs just aren’t that complex. I know many folks out there who are a bit more idealistic than I am might bristle on this—and I want to hear from them—but there comes a point where a team just needs to make a decision on where to invest time and resources. For smaller, leaner organizations, design teams might benefit a lot more from investing elsewhere, such as usability testing or accessibility reviews.
I have often wondered about certain techniques in design and particularly in social media marketing; whether or not the technique becomes another task in itself and gets in the way of a designer’s innate instinct/talent/intuition (call it what you will). Application of a rigid structure removes the “art” and homogenises a lot of our interactions as much as it standardises them. Where are the glorious Geo-Cities UI visual train wrecks that have become a style unto themselves?
Similarly, in marketing on Social Media, outside of large population centres in places, for instance like Northern Ireland, are huge spends having the desired effect of mobilising the desires of the public or is it more likely (I think) just a case of making short term spends over a long time to increase visibility. It has an undoubted effect on some people but it is no panacea and cannot operate in isolation.