The Sigia discussion list hosted a nice discussion on business needs and personas. I use personas for discussing requirements and one of the things that came up was to use a special persona that every programmer/designer knows about: grump.
I am certainly going to add this one to the list of must-have personas.
What I do with personas is to make sure that one of them is a grump,
Alexander Johannesen
one is impatience, one is dysfuctional, another is low-vision and
angry, and so forth. The fastest way to design for Mr Jenkins, age 53,
and to align him with the business goals is to point to him and ask if
someone on our team ever had to deal with this grump! And sure enough,
they have, and lots of suggestions crop up to try to get him off our
back, in the best possible way. People seem to (again, my experience)
spot flaws in systems faster based on how dysfunctional grumpy
impatient people use them. I also find it easier to work with my peers
when the personas are loaded with emotions and flaws more than
stereotypes of behavioral patterns.