Personas

Draft

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Introduction

According to usability.gov, “A persona is a fictional person who represents a major user group for your site. Personas help you identify major user groups of your Web site. You select the characteristics that are most representative of those groups and turn them into a persona. [...] Using personas helps the team focus on the users’ goals and needs. The team can concentrate on designing a manageable set of personas knowing they represent the needs of many users. By always asking, "Would Jim use this?" the team can avoid the trap of building what users ask for rather than what they will actually use.”

According to Fluid project article, “Personas are a model used to describe users' goals, skills, abilities, technical experience and context. They are detailed descriptions of archetypical users constructed out of well-understood, highly specific patterns of data about real people. A persona is not based on an individual - it is a construct developed through a detailed process, not the result of a search for the "right" individual (see persona creation for more on this). They are used by the design team (and larger project team) to describe, and keep front and center the user(s) for whom the system will be built.”

Method

Personas will include

• a name and photo
• demographic information
• job title and functions
• goals in mind when using the website you are designing

In addition:

• Personas may include or be linked to scenarios of use

With a persona sheet in mind, a member of the web design team then could say "well, Joe would do this and think that ...")

Links

Introductions

• Develop Personas, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (undated).

• What is a Persona? started by Gary Thompson, last edited by Daphne Ogle on May 25, 2010, at Fluid. (see also the other articles in this excellent series)

• Persona Creation, started by Daphne Ogle, last edited by Allison Bloodworth on May 26, 2009.

• An introduction to personas and how to create them by Tina Calabria, published March 2nd, 2004.

• How personas and scenarios can change your website for the better - Part I February 28th, 2006 | by John Wood and part II. Part I introduces how to build personas and part 2, how to create scenarios.

Example personas

• See most of the introductions above
• Fluid Persona Examples

Lists of articles

• Personas at Dey Alexander Consulting

Discussion

• Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas By Jared Spool and discussants, November 14th, 2007

• The Origin of Personas by Alan Cooper on August 1, 2003 (A. Cooper invented the “first serious business software for microcomputers” in 1975, i.e. an accounting program and later Visual Basic. He finally wrote an acclaimed UX book, "the )

Bibliography

• Cooper, Alan (1998 and 2004). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams - Pearson Education. ISBN 0672326140, ISBN 978-0672326141