Personas

PERSONAS DEFINITION

Excerpt from: A Designer’s Research Manual by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady (in our library)

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What are they? Personas are fabricated archetypes, or models, of end users. Personas identify user motivations, expectations, and goals. Think of a persona as a singular icon representative of an entire group. Conjecture regarding the persona’s reaction in a variety of situations can help designers identify common needs.

In communication design, personas are most commonly associated with interactive work. The American firm Cooper (formerly Cooper Interaction Design) and its principal, Alan Cooper, have been pioneers in the use of this technique. In his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Cooper explains why personas are often preferable to actual test subjects: “The most obvious approach-to find the actual user and ask him-doesn’t work for a number of reasons, but the main one is that merely being the victim of a particular problem doesn’t automatically bestow on one the power to see its solution.”

Although personas are fictitious, they represent the needs of real users and are developed through traditional research processes. This formative research is critical to being able to validate the characteristics of the model and ensure that they are not instead based on the designer’s opinion.

What can they do? Personas help guide the design process by shifting the focus directly to the user. Findings will help organize information, structure navigation, or even influence formal presentation and color choice. Because design efforts are based on these carefully researched and developed personas, the users’ goals and needs are sure to be addressed. As agreed-upon identity benchmarks, personas can also help the creative team substantiate their decisions when presenting design rationale to clients.

How to use them? Personas are created using several sources of information, including ethnographic research, focus groups, and demographic data. A brief description (maybe one to two pages long) is then created to flesh out individual attitudes, behaviors, environmental conditions, goals, personal details, and skill sets. It is important for the researcher to try to identify several different user types so that the goals of all users will be met. Keeping persona sets small ensures that the design process remains manageable, with one primary persona as a focal point.

Personas should be used as a component to a larger research strategy, not as a singular research method. Combining personas with other tools, such as user testing and marketing analysis, can give the designer valuable insight into the user’s needs.

When are they used? Personas can be used throughout the design process. In the planning or formative phases, they can be used to align project goals with audience needs. During the creative development phase, personas can be used as a standard to measure structural or aesthetic decisions.

Level of difficulty/complexity. There is a lot of information available about the creation of personas, specifically regarding their use when designing interactive projects. However, creating functional fictitious identities takes time, so production schedules should be written accordingly.