User-centred design puts the user at the heart of the design process so that the resulting product is easy to use. 'Personas' are a way of bringing the user alive - constantly reminding the development team who they are designing for. Personas, for developing web sites, have been around for a while and over the years we have seen both good and bad practice in the ways they are developed and used - so just how helpful are they?
Personas are 'archetypal' users - they tell stories about users in ways that people in the organisation can understand the user and what they want. They act as 'stand ins' for real users and help guide decisions about site aims, functionality and design.
Personas are different to market segments. Market segmentation details the quantitative aspects of the target audience - e.g. how many users there are, how old they are, ethnicity, sex. Personas, on the other hand, focus on the qualitative aspects of the target market - what type of people they are, what their motivations and constraints are, what they do and why, what their goals are - basically, what's going to make for a better user experience on the site. Demographics only really matter for personas when those demographics directly affect user behaviour - so, for example a schoolchild is likely to have different needs from a web site to a senior citizen. Segmentation may result in a large number of user types, difficult for a development team to design for. But an analysis of user goals may lead to only three or four personas focusing on the key target users: each persona will address a range of goals - so by designing for a single persona all other users with similar goals will be catered for.
The most effective personas are created through user research - where the data is based on what real users want - not made up by developers. Target user audiences are identified, interviewed and the feedback analysed to create personas - which 'translate' the raw market research feedback into something easier to digest. We have encountered a number of developers who use personas - which, in principle is good, but make them up based on their own preconceptions without any tailored research: talking to even just a couple of 'real people' would either validate or, more likely, challenge their ideas!
Personas describe the user - with the focus on goals, motivations, and behaviours. Personas are brought to life by giving them names and photos - turning the abstract concepts into flesh and blood. By doing this, it helps the web development team and content providers to 'walk in their users' shoes' and look at things from a different perspective to their own. It's very difficult, for example, for a 25 year old single male web developer to understand things from the perspective of a 49 year old mother of two who's trying to juggle work and home life! They are there as a constant reminder - as an A4 print out on the pin board by the desk, as a poster on the wall, as a cardboard cut out, in the corner of the office - continually reminding you about what's important to them.
Personas are deliberately short descriptions. The role of the persona is to provide a concise but precise pen portrait of the user - the person, their motivations and goals, and how the site should help them - so that people in the organisation can quickly focus on the things that are most important to them. They are short descriptions, rather than detailed reports - they can be described easily on one sheet of paper that make then easy and quick to understand.
There are a number of ways personas can help:
So when designing a site, writing some content, or improving functionality, personas force developers to think about what the persona wants, how they would like it and how it could be 'made good' for them: the extra member of the team who sits on your shoulder like Jiminy Cricket and comments and nags to get things right.
Specifically, personas can help in:
Although personas can be used to help site development in many ways, they are not a universal panacea and do have limitations:
Personas are a valuable tool for developing a usable, useful and relevant site - providing focus and clarity for all the team. But their validity depends on how they've been developed. Web Usability believes that useful personas should be based on sound user research that surfaces real users' goals, motivations, behaviours and contexts.
Cooper A. (1999) The Inmates are Running the Asylum, SAMS Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana
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Perfetti C. (Aug 2001) Personas: Matching a Design to the Users' Goals, UIE, www.uie.com
Spool J. (Dec 2004) Three Important Benefits of Personas, UIE, www.uie.com
McGovern G. (Feb 2005) Key steps in creating your reader persona, New Thinking, www.gerrymcgovern.com/new_thinking.htm
Pruitt J. and Adlin T. (2006) The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design, Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco, CA.
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