Today I chimed in on a UX introductory group's discussion on Facebook regarding where to start for personas and where to go from there. I was first trying to provide advice on how to help pull out a research participant's current journey as a method to see what their goals are, their problems, their motivations, their behaviours, etc. However, someone asked me if I use a different process than getting a persona written and going off into design. 

The following was my in-haste attempt to reply and explain how there is so, so much more that should be done before actually trying to design anything on paper, least of all digitally.