I know this isn’t a qualia we have spoken about in class, but I think the classification of the tool really relies on the depth with which the researcher manifests his design tools - not in the way in which the tools are named.

For example, if you were to perform a five minute contextual inquiry, draw no real insight, and reconstruct your persona and scenario as an exact replication of what you just saw - it’s a representation. Furthermore, even if you were to take many lengthy contextual inquiries - and cut and paste some of the discrete data into a simply summed persona and scenerio - it’s a bit more of a speculation now.. but it’s still shallow.

The technique, in my opinion, doesn’t matter (except in that we should know the strengths and limitations of the frameworks in order to make informed choices).

What you’re looking for is a rich appreciation of using audience in different facets and contexts. If there is a one-to-one map from data to technique, it’s a representation. If there is applied insight from research to technique, that’s speculation.

The pressing question remains, can my persona empirically verify that you new look is more like Lucius Malfoy or Flock of Seagulls?

p.s. your avatar wanted me to ask that question.

That said, and I do agree with the gist of what you have written, I would hasten to add that all speculations are grounded in representation. It is humanly impossible for it to be otherwise. Even the most outrageous fantasy is grounded in some observed reality. The more meaningful question is the relationship between the representational force and the speculative force, and you’ve given some nice examples with which to think through.

I think scenarios, personas, and even cognitive models are all essentially speculative. They are abstract constructs created by researchers. True, they are not invented out of thin air. But a persona is always already a character, a fiction. That in itself makes it speculative. Then there is the additional claim that this character is representative of a particular, relevant demographic. The basis of that claim is usually empirical and representative, but the extent to which a persona is different from a collection of averages (and it must be, or why would we bother?), it is speculative.

One way to think about it, and I’m kind of going off the top of my head right now, is the criterion of empirical verifiability. You can empirically verify whether Americans prefer Coke or Pepsi, dogs or cats. But you can’t empirically verify whether a persona prefers Coke or Pepsi, because the persona doesn’t exist!