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Personas

Make the design focus tangible for all stakeholders and engage empathy of the development team towards the human target of the design.

A persona is a user model, representing a realistic user (or a class of users) with a name, a face, realistic goals and a realistic behavior. It is not a literal description of an interviewed or observed individual, but a composite based on patterns of use of several real users who have been observed or interviewed during a field study. Although imaginary, it is not just ‘made-up’. A persona is a by-product of a field study, grounded in observed facts and defined with rigor and precision. The description of a persona is written in a natural language and is used as a design and communication tool.

personas

The main goal of creating personas is to make the target user as concrete as possible to prevent designers, analysts and developers from drifting towards an idealized view of 'the user', which lacks nuance. Therefore observed user characteristics, motivations and behaviour are transformed into the profile description of a fictive person. These characteristics are not to be confused with user role access rights or market segments. The latter typically constraint product design whereas a good persona inspires the design. Good examples of inspiring characteristics are age, frequency of use, familiarity with technology, context of use, relationship with the product, frustrations, risk avoidance, personal interests for working online...

The steps to be taken when creating personas are the following (according to Cooper):

  • Outline strategy - define the objectives of creating personas and how they will be used
  • Gather data - collect information the personas will be based on; in most cases the field study is the main source of data here
  • Define behavioral variables - select the characteristics that are of interest to the design
  • Discover patterns of use - set out the observation data and locate behavioral patterns, similarities and distinct differences which will form the base for the personas
  • Set up a base line or skeleton and prioritize - write an outline for each persona with the main ideas and then distinguish between several types of personas (such as primary personas, secondary personas, affected personas...)
  • Fill out the details - write out each persona profile in detail by applying a natural language and making it as lively as possible with names, photographs...; the details here should relate to the product, its requirements and the faced design challenges
  • Validate personas - verify whether the created personas are realistic and workable with all stakeholders
Risks: 

Personas are not always successful. The following pitfalls should be avoided:

  • literally taking over observed users
  • no acceptance or no support by leadership
  • lack of credibility
  • poorly communication of the personas
Effort: 

The required effort for creating personas is dependent on

  • the size of the field study to be performed to feed the persona creation
  • the required degree of representativeness
  • the size of the target audience for the product

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