A Quick Guide to User Personas
User personas are useful in any design process as they can be used throughout the development and life cycle of a product to prove or disprove a design, provide inspiration and determine what the next feature will be. User personas are also an effective tool for collating your research and data in a curated way.
What are user personas?
User personas have their origins in the advertising world where they are used to focus their target markets when selling a product; for designers user personas are a means of communicating user research in an memorable and easily understood manner. They are essentially a decision-making tool for designers and stake holders to keep focused on the end user.
User personas are NOT made up.
Although user personas are built up from research with real people the personas themselves are not individual people; they represent users (including extreme and potential users) and encompass trends.
Remember personas are ALWAYS based on research.
This however does not make them real people either, nor does it mean they are a segmented audience type that represents a statistic. Similarly they are not job or user roles where their usage is predetermined.
How to create user personas
Once you have collected your research it is now a case of organising and presenting it. This may mean a lot of curating, however here is the main bits of information you’ll need to start on your user persona:
- Name
- Age
- Occupation
- Likes and dislikes
- Current behaviour and usage
- Context on where and why the user does what they do
- Attitude towards the product and industry
- Goals and motivations
- Challenges and pain points
For any given product you will ideally need around four personas, however any more then eight will be unmanageable.
How to best make use of a persona
Once you have worked hard to create your user personas put it on display. It is best placed near the developers, designers and other creative members of the team. Make sure they can see it, so place on their eye line so they are always remind who the end users are. Another great way to share the user personas is to upload the personas to the shared drive of your company or even on the project management services you may use (e.g Trello).
I once worked in a company where the user personas were placed in the kitchen near the tea and coffee station, that way everyone was aware of who was using their product. The main point is to keep the personas visible and relevant.
Summary
- Personas are used as a tool to help build a product whilst keeping the end users considered throughout.
- All the information you present must be relevant and add value to user persona.
- User personas are based on data and they are not one user.
- It is best practice to have 4–8 personas per product.
- Extreme and potential users should also be covered in your set you user personas.
- Keep you user personas on display as well as providing a digital version.
More Resources
When writing this post my aim was to provide an overview of the purpose and benefits of user personas. For more information and a look at personas in greater detail please have a look at some of these amazing articles below:
A Closer Look at Persona (Part 1)
A Closer Look at Persona (Part 2)
UX Booth
Tuts+
Stop Putting User Personas in Your Desk Drawer
Injecting Personality into your Web Projects
Thank you for reading
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