Personas 101
Quick Tip!
Don’t model a persona after yourself if you’re not in the target audience.
What are Personas?
What is a persona? A persona is a representation of a specific audience, it is not one person but is an observation of many people through synthesized data. Personas are a profile of a specific audience. That embodies how people think and feel within the target audience. A persona highlights a user’s motivations, skills, frustrations, personality, and how they are with technology
Persona data is gathered by market research, statistical analysis, user interviews, and focus groups. These forms of research allow persona’s to be more accurate and better representation of the persona.
What are personas used for?
Personas can better serve a user’s needs. They allow for UXers, Designers, Developers, PMs, and Communication team members to better synthesize their findings and create better content that keeps the persona at the middle of creating content.
Personas are usually created at the beginning of the process in the project timeline, right after research has been conducted. However, it is important to note that after they are completed, they should be used throughout the process. They should be thought about when creating wireframes, testing, writing content. The persona should be at the beginning and end of the project cycle.
How do we create a persona?
- The first thing you want to do when you create a persona is gather data. Data can be gathered through quantitative and qualitative research methods and practices. It is important that you collect data before making assumptions about your audience.
- The next step is to summarize your findings so that you can better understand what direction you want to go in with your persona.
- Once once you have crafted a persona, think about how they might think and feel about your product.
- After this is all done you will present your personas so that everyone is on the same page.
What goes into a persona?
Once you are ready to synthesized your data and be able to enter in content for your persona.
- Background
- Background describes the main objectives behind the personas
- Demographics
- The demographics described the population of your persona
- Goals
- Goals describes the users ambitions for the user on what they want accomplish with this system
- Motivations
- Motivations describes the users desire and willingness to use the system
- Challenges
- Challenges describes the problems that a user would face when approaching the system
- What can we do
- What can we do describes what we can do as UXers to design and create a system that supports our users
- Common Objections
- Common objections refers to the relevances and importances of certain features that this persona needs
Check out these templates:
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Persona Template in Miro:
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ll7YyZc=/?invite_link_id=223877323206
