kolson7

Today I responded to a friend’s question about balancing qual and quant research for personas.  Such a good question, as there are different schools of thought.  Neilsen Norman (not who I would consider thought leaders in personas) suggests quant before qual, whereas Steve Mulder (a thought leader of personas) indicates qual before quant.

Of course, so much depends on what kind of research already exists, and what the purpose of doing qual would provide.  Looking at it in general, here’s my response:

“In general, quant before qual is best to help you shape your recruitment in finding the right people to research.  If you have basic market research, this likely won’t be necessary.  Your boss wants to create personas from a specific behavior set.  You could easily find them by popping up a survey on the home page with a short screener to get the right behaviors — then you can survey them after the interviews to validate your findings and determine just how large of your market they are.”

Thoughts?