John Hughes, WALL-E, and writing for a real person
I was a teenager at that magical time when John Hughes was doing his best work. I was 14 for “Sixteen Candles,” 15 for “The Breakfast Club,” 16 for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Pretty in Pink,” and 17 for “Some Kind of Wonderful.” (Yeah, I’ll wait for you to check IMDB and calculate my age.) I felt like he was writing to me, for me, and about me.
Turns out, he had a secret weapon. Her name was Alison.
After a teenaged Alison’s angst-filled letter to John Hughes was met with a form letter as a response, she angrily called him out on it. He responded – really this time – and the result was two years of correspondence.
Though the letters tapered off, they did have a phone conversation years later:
“…he was glad I had gotten in touch and that he was proud of me for what I was doing with my life. He told me, again, how important my letters had been to him all those years ago, how he often used the argument ‘I’m doing this for Alison’ to justify decisions in meetings.”
This reminded me of a similar story about WALL-E and the girl who cried. It seemed a woman named Courtney would cry every time she watched the WALL-E trailer, so she videoed her reaction and posted it on YouTube. It found its way to the Pixar offices, and was passed around:
“Six months ago, when the first trailer for WALL-E came out, we were only halfway done with the film, and we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to get it done. We were exhausted. And then, one day, a movie showed up on YouTube showing a girl watching the trailer for WALL-E. And every time she watched it, she would cry on cue. When we saw that, we knew we were on the right track.”
The people at Pixar sent her multiple emails during production, and when WALL-E was finally released, flew her in for the wrap party. They even introduced her during the speech before the movie, and she stood up to thunderous applause.
These were real people with real emotions and real opinions engaging with products and those who created them. How much more powerful would it be to say, “I’m writing this for Alison” or, “How would Courtney react” than it would be to say, “What would this made-up persona think of this”? How much more interesting would it be to strike up a conversation with a living human being than it would be to hang stock photos on the wall and pretend you’re having a conversation with them?
Personas are fine. Not suggesting you toss their lovely, modelesque faces in the shredder. But what if you supplement the personas with someone you actually know? Are you more apt to focus and fight for content that will benefit your brother than you would some dude ripped from the archives at iStockPhoto? I’m going to guess you would.
Find the people you’re writing for. Ask for their opinions. Mention their names in meetings. Fight for them.
Ferris would have wanted it that way.
3 Comments
dbrondeau on December 1st, 2009
Or even better yet, do some field interviews and talk to lots of real people—then use that rich data to create your personas. You may even find that after you do field interviews, the design team won’t need personas. Here’s an article that describes this a little more-
http://incontextdesign.com/articles/personas-and-contextual-design/
-dave
DSRebecca on February 17th, 2010
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Heavywinter on December 1st, 2009
Absolutely! I fully believe in the premise of personas, but why bother when you can get real, honest to goodness, genuine, living & breathing, physically existing human beings? Use a persona as a stopgap measure, ok, but not as a preferred tool. And just think, real people offer you the chance to have an exchange of ideas, to gain insightful bits of information and grant an ability to learn.