Welcome to Personas. Today we'll focus on what personas are, how they're developed,
and why, as a UX designer, you want to use them.
First, let's look into a dark world
where projects are created with out personas.
In this dark place, designs can change based on one person's requests. Egotistical designers can
Egotistical designers can decide they know exactly what the user wants.
The user is an ever-changing target.
The team can't decide who they're developing the project for and chaos
breaks out until the final version is given to the client bearing no
resemblance to the original idea and with little to no use.
Enter personas.
In user experience design personas are fictional characters
created to represent real segments of your audience. They're used to model the
behaviors of your users. Effective personas represent a major user group
for your website or application, give a clear picture of the users
expectations and how they're likely to use this site, and describe real people
with backgrounds, goals, and values.
How do I create a persona and leave the world of dark design behind?
The first step in creating personas is to research your users.
Let's say that we're creating a
mobile-based music app that can instantly send songs to friends. We start
by interviewing and observing people using similarly designed applications.
We ask them questions about who they are and why they're interested in using the new app.
We take note of any behaviors, assumptions, or expectations influencing their view.
Next we look for patterns in their answers. We identify specific, relevant,
and universal themes and characteristics. These help us group the users into
categories and create a model persona for each grouping.
Each persona usually includes the basics such as gender, age, and occupation.
Finally we make each persona realistic. We add a photo and other identifying
information including a background, likes, dislikes, hobbies, motivations, and
expectations. To make this representation real, we also added quote summing up what
matters most
to the persona as it relates to our new application. Now we've created a variety
of personas we can use during our UX design development.
Finally let's examine why personas are so important. We already know that
without personas UX designers are left in a dark and dangerous world, so let's
see how using personas brings light and balance to the development process.
Persona should be used throughout the creative process because they can help:
determine the goals for our project based on users wants and needs.
These goals are what any UX designer should focus on during development.
Answer questions - if the designer is unsure about something or has additional
questions they can go back to the personas to stay focused on the user's
needs and wants.
Build empathy - designers gain a perspective similar to their personas.
By giving the user a name, face, and background including hopes and dreams,
the designer makes creative decisions based on the personas worldview.
Define a focus - personas help the project team define who the website or
application is created for. Its easier for UX designers to relate to and
remember a tangible example instead of an abstract user.
Designers don't always know what's best. Without personas, designers can get lost
in the details,
conflict with team members, and suffer from an overall lack of focus.
They can get lost in the dark.
Developing personas sheds light on any project and allows a UX designer to
truly understand and internalize the user, resulting in a project designed
around what the user actually wants and needs.
Today we've examined what a persona is, how it's developed, and why it's used.
You have completed: Personas.