If You Build It They Will Come…
April 16th, 2009Hmm, no they won’t. You have to know who they are and what they want. Or they won’t even show up.
So who is visiting you website or using your application? How much do you know about them and are you meeting their needs. The more you know about your users the better you can cater to their needs. If you don’t care about your users it’s going to show. Who needs that? What’s the point in building an application or website people use only once and never use again. One tool for better understanding your users is to create a persona. Personas can be used for a new website or application or when re-designing an existing site or application.
So what is a persona? Well it’s just a made up person that you breathe life into.
Personas are documents that describe typical users. They can be useful to your project team, stakeholders, and clients. With appropriate research and descriptions, personas can paint a very clear picture of who is using the site or application, and potentially even how they are using it – A Project Guide to UX Design
A persona is a made-up person you will write to. A real person may have several different goals in mind, but a persona is built around a single goal or main objective. Every time you spot a different goal, you create a new persona…Once you have a persona’s goal clearly defined, dress the character up. Assign a name, an age, an employer, a daily routine, and a car, but not just any car – a particular car with a dent on the front right bumper. The specificity is important because it helps you believe in your own creation. Hot Text – Web Writing That Works
The use of personas is a technique popularized by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the Asylum
There are five methods for gathering the information to create personas.
For the average person with a small budget I would recommend using online surveys. They are easy to develop and conduct. Ideally using more than one research method will yield more information to write your personas. You can create your surveys using Google Docs or Survey Monkey.
The time invested up front to conduct user research will save time and money in the end. So if you can afford it spend the money on more than one user research method.
You should write at least three personas…yes three… not one or two…three. Some people write more than that so you’re getting off easy. Your persona should at a minimum have the following information:
- Photo
- Name
- Age
- Location
- Occupation
- Biography
You can also add the following information as well if relevant:
- Education
- Online activities
- Offline activities
- Salary
- Comfort with technology
- The list can go on and on…add whatever else you think might be important to make the persona as real as possible
Usability.gov, published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, has some examples of personas . The site also has examples of other documents for web design and usability guidelines.
Personas are a good way to get everyone working on a project out of their own heads and thinking about the people who will benefit from what they are working on. So stick them up on the wall after you create them and read them often so that you remember that “you are not your audience”.
Shelley-Ann West, Guest Blogger
Tags: Design, personas, User Experience, website planning
