No two people are alike. Just like each person has unique fingerprints, each has a unique personality. Many people think that personas and personalities are relatively the same, but that is just not the case.
According to Shalom Goltz, A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way. For designers, personas can help them be more effective with their work if used properly. A persona is very helpful in user experience research. Ph.D. Lene Nielsen’s “Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios” method gives ten steps to creating personas. The ten steps in order are Finding the Users, Building a Hypothesis, Verifications, Finding Patterns, Constructing Personas, Defining the Situation, Validation and Buy-In, Dissemination of Knowledge, Creating Scenarios, and On-going Development.
How “Real” are Personas
Personas do not describe real people. Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang write in their article, Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. They also say that creating personas can help you step out of yourself. However, you create personas based on data collected from real people. Research is usually only cold facts, but personas add a human touch.
Hypothetical personas do not rely on quantitative data and user research. Instead, it is based on experience. Because of this, typical users are built off assumptions and, because of this, are sometimes incorrect. Putting a face to your data is crucial because doing so allows you to realize a user’s needs, experiences, goals, and frustrations. Each persona has its own story and intentions when coming to use your product.
How do I make a persona?
In this week’s assignment, I was tasked with creating comprehensive personas. To do this, I first read a guide to personas by Ben Le Ralph. After reading through this guide, I now understand what goes into creating a comprehensive persona and how to create a comprehensive one. I used one of the websites I analyzed a few weeks prior to create two personas. The website I used was TaylorMade’s rather than Titleist’s website, as they are both very similar, but TaylorMade suited me better in what I was trying to accomplish.
I utilized the persona notepad, which helped me create two different personas. The first persona I created was one for myself, and the other was for a hypothetical user. I started by filling out first impressions for my persona. In the first impressions, I included an image, name, motivations, and a brief background on myself. I then put in some quotes related to my persona before focusing on my motivations and behaviors by utilizing my goals and my journey. The next step consisted of me coming up with my motivating factors, inhibiting factors, and potential triggers, which were still included in the Motivations and Behaviors stage. Next, I utilized a graph with motivation on one axis and ability on the other before creating a point of how easy or hard TaylorMade’s website is to navigate and if my motivation to make a purchase is high or low. Following that step, I came up with similar personas to my own before creating a persona matrix. For the persona matrix, the options were golfs all the time, golfs once every few weeks, saving money, and spending money. I then put the three similar personas and my own on the chart in their respective places. I took the same steps when creating the hypothetical persona.
The Benefits of Using Personas
Personas are not always effective. For a persona to be compelling, it must represent a significant user group for your website, give a clear picture of the user’s expectations, and describe real people. There are benefits of personas. According to usability, Personas aid in focusing decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation while offering a quick and cost-effective way to test features throughout the development process. Developing a persona at the beginning of a project is crucial as it can help you find new opportunities. Without understanding and being able to develop a persona, you will not be able to be as successful as you make, like with whatever it is you may be trying to do.
Please see my Persona PDF Below