User personas explained
It’s all about people.
A persona is depicted as a specific person but they are not a real individual. They are synthesised from observations of many people and are used as a way to model, summarise and communicate user research.
One thing to ask yourself throughout their creation: how can I make these more inclusive?
Why do we use them?
Personas can be used throughout the creative processes by stakeholders and the development team to:
Build empathy — When you see the world from your user’s perspective, then determining what is useful and what is an edge case becomes a lot simpler.
Develop focus — By identifying your user types you can prioritise which users are more important and therefore where you should spend your time and energy.
Communicate — When everyone share the same understanding, then agreeing on solutions and getting buy-in becomes that little bit easier.
Defend decisions — When a design choice is brought into question, defending it based on real data and research on users (as represented by a persona) is the best way to show others the logical and user-focused reasoning behind the decision.
Measure effectiveness — You might not always be able to test an iteration with real users. In those cases you can play-act as one of your personas to figure out how they would react to your solution. Getting your stakeholders involved in the play-acting will help build empathy between them and your users.
Key elements
Personas can be as simple or as complex as you need but usually, they will contain some of the following:
Goals/motivations — Why are they using *your* product? What are they trying to achieve? What type of relationship do they want with your brand?
Demographic details — Age, married/single/divorced/widowed, sometimes income level: low income/average/high can affect their behaviour.
Personal details — Photograph, name, and a short biography. Are they technically savvy? How confident are they in making a purchase?
Behavioural details — Focus on the ‘how’. How do they find the information they need? How do they tend to act when using your product?
Attitudinal/cognitive details — Think about the type of pain points they encounter along the way, how do they tend to respond to them?
Quotes — Sum up what matters most to the persona when using your product. Give it some personality.
We all use our own experiences when creating these, and that leads to some great insights, but remember to keep biases and egos in check. Be inclusive, try to think of what areas your personas don’t cover and then work with your team on how you can include those areas in your existing personas. Even if all you have are 3 personas, they can be diverse and still be representative.
