'Personas' provide requirements that are too vague (comment on a 37signals post)

The 37signals guys say they don't design software to meet the needs of 'Personas' representing 'typical users', they design it for actual people -- themselves, mostly. Read the post for their justification.

If you've now read it, I just want to note that I think it's an example of how central high standards are to ‘creative’ tasks. The problem with the ‘personas’ is they’re too vague, and thus don’t provide stringent enough critiera or standards for judging what you've done and what you should do.

I think success in creative tasks is primarily a matter of having high-standards or strong evaluation criteria (though my point here is mainly just to make a 'mental note' about this example rather than to try and properly justify that larger point).