2-4 Construct Personas

A persona is a model of a target user for a product or service. A persona summarizes the target user’s background, goals, and needs. The persona helps you design a solution to meet the target user’s expectations.

A persona is based on data collected from multiple users through observations, interviews, surveys, etc. However, the persona is presented as a description of an individual person, even though the persona actually represents a group of users with similar characteristics.

The reason for presenting the user data as an individual person is because it is easier to empathize with a description of a specific person, rather than a set of statistics summarizing an entire group.

Here is an example of a persona created for a travel booking website:

VIDEO: What are personas, and why should I care?

A product or service might have many different types of users with different backgrounds, goals, and needs. Therefore, different personas could be created to model these different types of users.

However, it may not be possible (or desirable) to design an solution that tries to meet the needs of every possible type of user. Often this results in a solution that doesn’t actually satisfy anyone. Instead, it is recommended to identify the primary type (or types) of users that represent your main target for designing your solution.

It is important that a persona is fictional (not an actual individual) yet realistic (based on data from actual users). Since the goal is to develop empathy for the target users, a persona should not be humorous.

There are different formats for personas, but personas are usually condensed to one-page in length and often contain information such as:

• Profile (background information about user):

  • Photo (fictional - use stock photo)

  • Name (fictional - first name is sufficient)

  • Type of User (label or category)

  • Relevant Demographic Information (might include: age, gender, occupation/role, etc.)

  • Other Relevant Information or Context (might include: description of physical, social, and technological environment in which product/service will be used; user’s proficiency with technology; special knowledge or skills; personality traits; quote from user; etc.)

• Goals (what high-level goals does user want to achieve with product/service, and what tasks does user need to complete in order to meet these goals)

• Anxieties and Motivations (what influences user’s behaviors and decisions related to adopting possible new solution to meet goals)

• Frustrations (what pain points does user experience with current situation or current solution)

• Needs and Expectations (what are user’s expectations related to functionality, usability, and user experience of possible new solution)

YOUR TASK

Identify two different types of users (stakeholders) that will be your main targets for designing your solution.

For example, your stakeholders might have different roles (such as: students, teachers, administrators, staff, etc.). Even if there only seems to be one group that you are targeting (such as: students that get food from the cafeteria), try to identify two subgroups that may have different needs (such as: students that only occasionally get food from the cafeteria vs. students that regularly get food from the cafeteria).

Use your team’s research data to construct a separate persona for each of these two types of users using this template.

EXAMPLE: Here is an example of a persona for a smart student attendance system created with this template.