Defining Personas, A User Experience Approach

Defining Personas

Leon Kadoch HardieInformation ArchitectPanama City, Rep. of [email protected]

A User Experience Approach

Importance

• Personas are fictitious characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product

• Useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of the users in order to help to guide decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design

Why are we talking about this?• Personas are most often used as part of:– User-centered Design– Interaction Design (IxD), – Industrial Design.

Also

A persona may be synthesised from a series of "field activities" such as interviews and work observations resulting in a representation of an individual that embody the characteristics

of a target user population

Baby steps

• Help team members share a specific, consistent understanding of various audience groups. Data about the groups can be put in a proper context and can be understood and remembered in coherent stories.

- Allan Cooper

• Proposed solutions can be guided by how well they meet the needs of individual user personas. Features can be prioritized based on how well they address the needs of one or more personas.

- Allan Cooper

• Provide a human "face" so as to focus empathy on the persons represented by the demographics

- Allan Cooper

Why are we using them ?Powerful Communication Tool

acquire the mindset of his/her character or in other words to become that character

representation of the goals and behaviorof a real group of users

When it is not possible to ask a user, then…

try with the ‘persona’.

• Develop the personas during the research phase• Analyze all your existing data (traffic stats,etc.)• Group the users according to the goal and

business objective

But… “They’re NOT real users !”

Results are Empirical

Verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic

What’s in a ‘Persona’ ?

Answer !• Name• Photo• Age• Education• Family Status• Job title and responsibilities• Goals and Tasks in your website• environment (physical, social,

technological) • a quote that sums up what

matters most to the persona with relevance for your site

How do we get the information?

• Contextual Interviews

• Individual Interviews • Surveys (Online) • Focus Groups • Usability Testing

Contextual Interviewwatch and listen as users work

Talking to the user by phone, IM, face-to-face. No need to watch the user work

Individual Interview

watch and listen as users work

Contextual Interview

structured interviews with users, where you display a list of questions online and record users' responses

Surveys

Moderated discussion between a group of people with subjects previously selected

Focus Group

• Representative users try to do typical tasks with the product, while observers, including the development staff, watch, listen, and take notes.

Usability Testing

Examples

Accessibility counts !

Task Analysis & Scenarios

Leon Kadoch Hardie:.Information Architect

Panama, Rep. of Panamawww.leon-kadoch.com

[email protected]