As design thinking and user centered design continue to grow, it’s becoming increasingly clear that basic demographic research is becoming obsolete. Even the word demographic conjures the image of stuffy suits and boardrooms, spreadsheets full of numbers that have become completely detached from who they represent. How can designers take all their research and humanize it? Personas.
An example of how a typical persona is set up via konrad.com
65% of designers report that they use personas. Informally developed in the mid 90s, personas are a way to model, summarize, and communicate research in a way that taps into our humanity. Alan Cooper described them as a harmonious whole. Personas are a way to address business needs, technology goals (as well as limitations) and user needs simultaneously. They help designers visualize designing for a specific someone instead of just a generic everyone.
While there is no concrete way to build a persona, there are certain steps designers should take to ensure their persona’s success.
Interview and Observe: Interview and observe several different people to get a sense of who the user is. It’s important to conduct these interviews in the users’ environment as well to observe a more complete profile.
Find Patterns: Once all the information from the interviews is collected, designers should find patterns in the responses and actions they observed. These patterns allow designers to group similar users together.
Create Archetypical Models: Based on the patterns discovered, the next step is to create a model of a person who would fit into one of these groups.
Create User Centered Designs: Now that the user is so clearly defined, it is easier to design for their needs and pain points.
Share: Throughout the whole process, it is important to be continuously sharing your findings with the rest of the team involved. Sharing early in the design process helps every involved and leave designers the time and freedom to continue to tweak the model.
A good persona will provide insight on a potential user’s motivations, goals, abilities, environment, and who in their life influences their decisions.
Personas are extremely powerful when used in the right time or place, but there are other times they are not warranted. Like any other tool used to convey information, personas can be used to skew data and push a bias. In the end, this only ends up harming the design process because of the designer’s false sense of who the user is.
In Practise
I wanted to capture my personality in a memorable way
As an exercise, I created two personas for users and readers of the popular horror news website FANGORIA (which I have written about in the past). I started off by creating a persona for myself.
The context of the environment the user is in is a very important component of personas
As an avid horror fan, I am definitely part of FANGORIA’s reader demographic. Female millennials make up a little over 40% of the horror fanbase in general so it would make sense that FANGORIA would want me to use their website. Interestingly, they are an older publication, originally just a magazine, and their digital publication leaves something to be desired. Going beyond just my demographic, I think information about when and where I like to read FANGORIA’s articles would help them create a more digital reader-friendly experience. If the website were to just look at data, my desire for easier accessibility would probably be overlooked.
Adam is a real person, his persona is a combination of a couple people
For my second persona, I wanted to capture the personality of people in my life like my boyfriend and my brother, who both have an interest in horror but are more casual viewers of the genre. It seems that FANGORIA already makes an effort with their subject matter to draw in readers in this group (musician features and retrospectives for cult classics), and I think that can be extended to their website design. Continuing their journey into the digital age I think this persona would be much more motivated to visit the site if FANGORIA had their own app or posted more regularly on social media.
The second persona made it clear to me personally how hard it is to remove your own biases from design thinking. I kept letting my own feelings color what I thought another user would want or need instead of just looking at the information in front of me. The exercise really made it clear how important it is to be mindful and honest with who you’re designing for. Putting a name and a face to who I’m trying to design for makes the process infinitely more manageable.
Personas aren’t the end-all answer to designers understanding who they’re creating for, but they ease the process and make it feel more natural. They make the process feel more personal and grant designers the ability to gain a more nuanced understanding of why users do the things they do and what they expect from an organization within any given context. Quick, clear, and human are all good qualities to have in design.
References:
Goltz, S. (2014, August 6). A closer look at personas: What they are and how they work: 1. Smashing Magazine. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-1/.
O’Connor, K. (n.d.). Personas: The foundation of a great user experience. UX Magazine. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://uxmag.com/articles/personas-the-foundation-of-a-great-user-experience.
Sauro, J. (n.d.). 7 Core Ideas About Personas and the User Experience. MeasuringU. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://measuringu.com/personas-ux/.
UX, E. (2019, August 16). The Ultimate Guide to Creating Personas and How to Use Them to Enhance Your Business. Medium. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://ergomania-ux.medium.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-creating-personas-and-how-to-use-them-to-enhance-your-business-1066b0d1f50b.
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