Personas

In user-centered design, a persona is a fictional character created to capture the important aspects of your target users. They represent the different user types that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way. Personas are useful in considering the goals, desire and limitations of the users in order to help guide decisions a service product or interaction space such as features, interactions and visual design of a website – Wikipedia

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1-2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes and environment, with a few fictional personal details that make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design.

Prior to my internship at +iHub, I had no idea what a persona was and for some of you, this might probably be the first time you are hearing about it. Naturally, I was excited! We did a couple of interviews for an application that would be developed and spent some afternoons in the boardroom creating and developing personas. It is fun experience! During the process we used to joke about how we sounded ‘stereotypical’ but in the end we always concluded that it was necessary to sound like that. Because let’s face it…there is a product that someone earning X amount of dollars would use while one earning Y amount wouldn’t and equally, there are apps people from other countries would use that others wouldn’t.

So, always having a persona in mind while designing and developing is useful as it will build empathy with your users, develop focus (clear target), measure effectiveness, communicate and make good decisions.

In the not so recent Google UX MasterClass {Photo Credits} we had a brief session on personas. I loved the example they used in the presentation and I thought I should share it to make understanding personas a bit easier. Hence, meet Laura…. {Pictured Above}

She buys a lot of shoes, but hates waiting at stores. She loves to use apps, especially photo sharing ones. She just got a new job and is budget conscious. Product brief – To create an app that makes shoe shopping smarter and faster.

Identify the concepts that matter to your persona and develop your product goals around them e.g smartphone app user, time conscious, wants to save money

Translate to product goals. If you imagined your product improving your persona’s life, what would it do? Note…goals should be high leveled and not features!

Hmmm, so do you feel more enlightened about personas than before you read this post? I really hope so! If not, feel free to ask, it’s always a pleasure :)

Have a lovely evening!

#HappyDays