User Personas
A persona is a way to model, summarise and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched. A persona is portrayed as a specific person but is not really a real person. The designer has actually just created and named this person based on observations of many people.
What Does a Persona Look Like?
Although a persona is usually presented as a one-page document, it is more than this. They are used as a way to communicate and summarise research trends and patterns to others. This is crucial to understand what is important to the users.
Components of Goal-Directed Design that Support Personas
- End Goals
- Scenarios
How are Personas Created?
- Via interviews or observations of a suitable number of people (EG 5-10 people) (8-10 year olds or parents)
- Finding patterns in the interviewee’s responses. These patterns are then used to group similar people together.
- Creating archetypical models of these groups based on these patterns found.
- Drawing from these understanding of users to create a model of this understanding.
- Sharing these models with your team members to create the most successful product possible.
What are Personas Used for ?
- To build empathy
- To develop focus
- To communicate and form a concensus
- To come to a final decision
- To measure the effectiveness of the project
Are Personas Effective?
Personas are extremely powerful when used in the right time and place. They are not always needed and so may not always be effective. The main trick as a designer is to know what process tools to use and how to use it effectively.
Questions to ask 8-10 year olds
- what do you learn at KS3?
(EG they may not know anything about the periodic table but they may be learning about something else EG different foods. To tie these two subjects together you could then ask if they know what elements are in these fruits)
- Find out their common interests
(EG 8/10 love games ad 7/10 love playing snap- could then create a successful app by creating a game of snap with some of the periodic table elements) all about tailoring the product to their communal interests)
- ask them to show more than tell
(EG what games do you play?)
Might be a smart idea to post the questionnaire on mums net or to post it on your instagram story to get other peoples younger children to participate via that
How do Personas Work?
- Narrative Practice
This is the ability to create, share and gear stories.
- Long-Term memory
The ability to acquire and maintain memories of the past wisdom from our own life experiences which can be used to find solutions that other users face.
- Theory of Mind (folk psychology)
The ability to predict another person’s behaviour by understanding their mental state
- Empathy
The ability to understand, relate to and share the feelings of another perosn
- Experience-Taking
The ability to have the emotions, beliefs etc of a fictional character when reading others a story.
Socialise the Personas
By sharing the persona document with others, you’re spreading the knowledge that you have gained throughout this entire process.
It is important to consider presenting these personas to other in a way in which they can easily engage with it.
Examples of User Personas
See the link to my Pinterest Board here
Spaghetti Sauce TedTalk- Malcolm Gladwell
See TedTalk here