Why personas

See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms. Email We respect your privacy Please provide a valid email address. Download free template Download free template. Christie is living in a small apartment in Toronto, Canada. Christie loves to travel and experience other cultures.

She recently spent her summer holiday working as a volunteer in Rwanda. She loves to read books at home at night as opposed to going out to bars. She does like to hang out with a small group of friends at home or at quiet coffee shops. What matters to her is values and motivations. In an average day, she tends to drink many cups of tea, and she usually cooks her own healthy dishes.

She uses the internet for her studies to conduct the majority of her preliminary research and studies user reviews to help her decide upon which books to read and buy. Christie also streams all of her music and she watches movies online since she does not want to own a TV. Christie gets up at 7 am. She eats breakfast at home and leaves for university at 8. Depending on her schedule, she studies by herself or attends a class.

She has 15 hours of classes at Masters level every week, and she studies for 20 hours on her own. Christie dreams of a future where she can combine work and travel. She wants to work in a third world country helping others who have not had the same luck of being born into a wealthy society.

The method of developing personas stems from IT system development during the late s where researchers had begun reflecting on how you could best communicate an understanding of the users. Various concepts emerged, such as user archetypes, user models, lifestyle snapshots, and model users. In , Alan Cooper published his successful book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, where he, as the first person ever, described personas as a method we can use to describe fictitious users.

Personas are fictional characters. Personas make the design task at hand less complex, they will guide your ideation processes, and they will help you to achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for your target user group. The step process covers the entire process from the preliminary data collection, through active use, to continued development of personas.

Nielsen , Lene, Personas. Atlanta based Photographer Jason Travis has created a series of Persona Portraits with their artifacts which illustrates the power of visually representing archetypal users, customers or personalities.

Log in Join our community Join us. Open menu Close menu. Join us. Goal-directed Personas This persona cuts straight to the nitty-gritty. Img Source 2. Role-Based Personas The role-based perspective is also goal-directed and it also focusses on behaviour. Img Source 4. Fictional Personas The fictional persona does not emerge from user research unlike the other personas but it emerges from the experience of the UX design team.

There are four main parts: Data collection and analysis of data steps 1, 2 , Persona descriptions steps 4, 5 , Scenarios for problem analysis and idea development steps 6, 9 , Acceptance from the organisation and involvement of the design team steps 3, 7, 8, Add a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character.

Give each of your personas a name. Create 1—2-pages of descriptions for each persona. Secure form. Name Please provide your name. Email We respect your privacy. Closes in. View course. Join , designers who get useful UX tips from our newsletter.

A valid email address is required. Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. Read article. Design Thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engin 1. An integral part of the Design Thinking process is the definition of a meaningful and actionable problem statement, whic 1.

Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them. Effective personas:. Personas help to focus decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation. They also offer a quick and inexpensive way to test and prioritize those features throughout the development process. In addition they can help:. Personas development belongs at the beginning of the project, as personas can inform site functionality, help uncover gaps, or highlight new opportunities.

You may develop one or more personas for a project but limit yourself to the main audiences for the site. For any given project, creating only three or four personas is best. Remember that it is better to paint with a broad brush and meet the needs of the larger populations than try to meet the needs of everyone.

The goal of personas is not represent all audiences or address all needs of the website but instead to focus on the major needs of the most important user groups. The following questions and areas of discussion will help you construct a snapshot of the visitors to your site. Organize persona information in an easy to read, logical format. Depending on the amount of user research you were able to conduct and the nature of your organization, personas may be laid out in a number of ways, including:.

Some personas are incredibly detailed, whereas others simply offer a brief sketch of each type of user. Here is an example of a portion of a larger persona developed by the U. He is focused, goal-oriented within a strong leadership role. One of his concerns is maintaining quality across all output of programs. He is comfortable using a computer and refers to himself as an intermediate Internet user.

He is connected via a T1 connection at work and dial-up at home. He uses email extensively and uses the web about 1. Persona developed by the U. Skip to main content. Improving the User Experience. The more information you have, the better. Generally, Personas whittled down from several user groups are sufficient to capture and document a majority of user requirements. Depending on your project, you may have past users or you may not.

Luckily, there are a variety of methods to collect data for either situation.