A PERSONA is a document that outlines the kinds of users that will visit your website. Typically, one persona is established for every kind of user. You can see the objectives that users will be attempting to accomplish on your website by using personas.
This post will teach you exactly what data is required to produce a really helpful persona. You’ll discover the ideal moment to create your personas, what data what must be said, and how to put it in an understandable and succinct manner.
Additionally, you’ll receive some suggestions for gathering the data required to build a strong persona that is inspired by actual people.
What makes a good persona?
Good personas are grounded in credible sources and actual people. It focusses on the main objectives that user groups must fulfil, as well as user attitudes, behaviours, and behaviours during goal completion.
In the end, personas must assist you in determining if the choices you make will benefit or harm your users.
When to create a persona
Simply said, you ought to start one right away. Personas don’t fit into a certain part of a single project process, in contrast to wireframes or prototypes. Rather, they aid in directing every aspect of each project. They offer a convenient source of reference for decisions related to design, ideation, and strategic adjustments.
Because personas and task models are closely related and based on similar research, they may be constructed side by side for efficiency. This also enables you to take into account different personas depending on the task models.
Personas ought to be dynamic records. They catch a moment in time in the lives of an audience. Your personas need to be updated to reflect any new insights that are discovered through additional research. By doing this, the personas become a strategic instrument that is always in use, representing user behaviour and revealing new opportunities.
What are you communicating?
A persona has two goals:
An effective character is determined by the tasks, actions, and attitudes of your users rather than by their stories or demographics. For instance, you shouldn’t build personas based on the newspapers people read, the automobiles they drive, or the dimensions of their inside thighs if you’re creating a website for holiday reservations. This information is not useful for creating your product. Steer clear of extraneous material and concentrate on your main objectives. This aids in your ability to envision how customers will use your product, which enables you to increase their utility.
Use short descriptive bulleted points
Steer clear of stories. I adore stories, don’t get me wrong, but not in characters. The challenge with stories is that they are difficult to write well, and unless they are very captivating, readers won’t spend the time to read them. The reader will put in less effort if your persona content is limited to brief lines and bullets.
Base personas on real people
Personas ought to be based on actual subjects of actual study. Creating your character around a person you met while conducting research is a fantastic method to make sure of this. After selecting a person that accurately embodies the persona, include any more pertinent details you discovered during your investigation. This indicates that your persona presents an accurate picture of the group it represents while drawing from personal experiences and real-world examples.
Use descriptive photography
Although photos can play a significant role in defining a persona, they are frequently misused. A cheesy smiling portrait is usually placed at the top of a shot because most photos are used to contrast a human face with the character. Pictures on personalities are capable of far more.
Just by looking at the image, the reader can learn something about this user group.For instance, the picture should show someone having trouble using technology if one of your personas finds it difficult. Your personas’ photos ought to reflect user behaviour more than just age and gender.
Steer clear of stock photos. They are cheesy and detract from the realism of your identities because real individuals don’t stand in studios grinning cheesily. Ideally, you will want to use actual user images that you took while conducting ethnographic research (more on that later in this chapter). Using images of actual users carrying out relevant tasks will help you keep your personas grounded in reality. Naturally, this isn’t always feasible. Using an online photo-sharing website such as Flickr is an alternative. These have an abundance of unposed pictures of actual individuals in actual settings. But before using the photos, you should be aware of the licensing attached to them and may need to get the photographer’s consent.
One wonderful touch would be to give a picture of the characters’ surroundings. If you depict the area individuals occupy when attempting to use your system, you may get some intriguing concepts about their limitations and behaviours. It might reveal to you whether they operate in a disorganised, noisy workplace. It might display the types of devices they use, such as laptops or smartphones. It might display any additional tools they utilise, like notepads, books, or brochures, to accomplish their objectives.
Anatomy of a persona
01. Photos
Use illustrative images that contrast the persona with a human face and provide the reader with some background information about the person.
0.2 Persona names
In design meetings, having a name for the persona not only helps to humanise it but also makes it clear to whom you are referring: “This idea would work for Ken, but not so much for Deirdre.”
0.3 User Quotes
A quotation from a person you met while conducting research can help to flesh out the persona and provide a brief synopsis of her mindset as she works towards her objectives.
04. Key goals
You can make sure you have everything set up to ensure users can accomplish what they want to achieve on your website or with your software if you know what they want to do. While each personas will have varying objectives, in general you want to know the answers to the following:
0.1 What do they need to know?
0.2 What is their ultimate goal?
0.3 Do they have a specific assignment to finish quickly?
0.4 Do they want to take their time and enjoy the experience?
0.5 Behaviours
You may make persuasive designs that influence decisions and allay concerns in people by understanding what drives them and how they are likely to feel. Seek responses to the following enquiries.
01. What are their motivations for using the system?
0.2 What are they likely to be feeling when they use your system? (Do they assume it’s going to be a frustrating experience?)
03. Do they have a lot of spare time to perform their tasks?
04. What influences their choices?
05. What puts them off or makes them lose trust?
Must do’s
What you need to perform to support your users’ primary jobs and behaviours is outlined in a must do. These ought to be about your entire system or service because they can be used to verify new features or design choices.
Must never’s
A must never and a must do are similar in that they both centre on things you must never do. You may avoid creating a system that will leave your users feeling lost or bewildered by avoiding any of the things listed in your must never section.
Who is the audience?
Personas are intended for individuals who must make decisions regarding the overall strategy or system design. A thoroughly investigated persona can assist in guiding these choices. They are especially helpful for businesses that have no consumer information. It allows you to reflect about your motivations for taking certain actions.
Based on past experiences, it’s critical to get senior stakeholders’ support while developing personas. This makes sure they don’t go lost or end up collecting dust on the shelf. Getting support does not entail flaunting the identities after they are finished.
Early engagement of senior stakeholders in the process is crucial. Allow them to participate in research and testing sessions so they may observe some of the objectives and behaviours that will be portrayed in your personas. They will be able to understand the individuals’ motivations and be more receptive to them than if they were simply thrown on their desk following six months of in-depth study conducted behind closed doors.
Research teams, whether internal or external, can also benefit greatly from personas. When conducting user research, the persona proves to be an invaluable resource for enlisting test subjects. You can hire people based on their goals when you create goal-based personas. For instance, when you are testing a travel website, you will select people whose objective is to make reservations for a lengthy family vacation as well as those who want to make reservations for a quick getaway for a couple.
Personas should be kept accessible or constantly visible, so that project teams can consult them while making design decisions.
How to validate personas
Since personas are the result of extensive research, they won’t require validation at first. However, you must ensure that your identities remain pertinent over time.
You can always run your identities by the call centre or customer support representatives for instant validation. These are the individuals who interact with users the most, so they can determine whether the personas you’ve created match their experiences or are merely made up.
Personas can also be verified by comparison with any additional research conducted for other initiatives in your organisation. You can assess the outcomes using your personas whether you’re conducting online surveys to learn more about the customer experience or usability testing to find some quick wins. Your personas remain relevant if fresh findings align with them, as may be seen by comparing your results. The findings might need to be updated if they don’t align with your personalities. To be sure, though, it would be safest to carry out more specific validation study at that point.
RESEARCH AND WORKSHOP IDEAS
Research is the foundation of a strong identity. Personas are doomed to fail without it. Simply made-up personas are simple to identify and quickly forgotten.
Start with a theory
Obviously, you should talk to a lot of people, but with whom? You don’t know what kinds of people use your system yet because you don’t have your personalities, do you?
You must formulate a hypothesis first. Determine the main objectives of the study and select research subjects in accordance with them.
No matter how little information your firm now has about its consumers or customers, start your hypothesis with what it already knows.
Consider the kinds of situations these people might be in and the kinds of objectives you believe they should accomplish. For instance, don’t only hire people based on criteria like “Needs to buy a cot” or “Needs to buy a pram” if you’re conducting research for a store that sells items to expectant mothers. Rather, hire people based on more general objectives and scenarios, like
01. First-time mother trying to buy everything she needs.
02. Mother of two or more who needs to make a large necessary purchase.
03. A relative looking for a gift for a mother.
Additionally, all pertinent project aspects must be included in your goals. Do your research after you have a theory. Your investigation will support such theories or refute them.
Listen in on call centres
In case you possess a call centre, it’s an excellent tool for promptly attending to the enquiries and requirements of several users. But, the amount of information obtained is not comparable to that of depth interviews. The objective is to observe without taking part. Take note of the requests, queries, and information that people are making when they call. You ought to start to notice themes and patterns by the end of the day. You should keep an ear out for the following if we utilise the mother and infant retailer example:
01. The types of products they’re trying to buy.
02. The information they want to know about the products.
03. The problems they face when trying to buy those products.
Call centre listening can be done remotely by calling in, but visiting the call centre in person yields far greater benefits. You can communicate with the call centre employees using this. This is significant since they will be familiar with the most typical issues and queries that callers have. I hope this makes sense in light of what you have been reading and hearing about in previous studies. Additionally, you can discover the solutions that agents at call centres offer consumers.
Specifically, you want to find out the following information from the call center staff :
01. What are the most common problems or complaints?
02. What are the solutions you give to people?
Conduct depth interviews
You can speak with a limited number of people during depth interviews, but as the name implies, you can obtain some detailed information.
The purpose is to engage users in conversation about their past experiences attempting to fulfil system-relevant goals. It is necessary to have conversations with the groups of users you initially defined (e.g., first-time mothers, mothers of two or more, and people purchasing gifts for mothers). Talk about what they recall from the last time they succeeded in achieving their objective. Specifically, you would like to know:
01. What information did they need to know?
02. What problems did they encounter?
03. What were they able/unable to do?
04. What tasks were involved in achieving their goal?
05. What did they use to achieve their goal (websites, books, other people, for instance)?
06. If they were going to attempt to achieve that goal again, how would they do it?
The rich, qualitative data you collect will help you identify potential themes for your character, but due to the small sample size, you might need to employ additional strategies to obtain more data to support those themes.
Conduct ethnographic research
Simply seeing (and conversing with) individuals as they attempt to accomplish their goals in their natural environments is what we mean by ethnographic research (for example, an in-depth interview in their natural setting).
We once conducted research for eBay in an effort to comprehend the requirements and aspirations of the users who made the most sales on the platform. We went to their houses instead of bringing them inside the lab. This gave us a better understanding of any limitations they could have had because it allowed us to observe the kind of workplace they worked in. Instead of just talking about things, we could also see things, such as what they were attempting to sell and how they were attempting to describe it on eBay.
An ethnographic research would be an excellent idea for the mother-and-baby retailer in their stores (with permission from the firm, of course). Follow customers carefully to see what (if anything) they are purchasing. Pay attention to the talks they conduct with the store employees. This might assist you in comprehending how clients make decisions. Speaking with the store employees about your findings at the conclusion of the day is also a smart option. This will support the validity of your findings and elicit further customer behaviour narratives.
A tiny sample size can yield a wealth of knowledge through ethnographic research. Additionally, you pick up a lot of knowledge from people in their normal settings that you wouldn’t in a laboratory setting.
Define your personas
By now, you should have drawn users to your system according to the objectives you set forth for it. You will have discussed with them how they accomplish those objectives and identified the methods they employ. It is now your task to compile these data into personalities.
Gather the interviewees’ notes and arrange them according to the objectives you established at the beginning of the process. Group everyone who was hired, for instance, because they were first-time mothers attempting to buy all they needed, and group everyone who was buying gifts for mothers.
Examine the many strategies people used to accomplish the objectives you established, concentrating on one group at a time. It’s possible that everyone followed the identical procedure to accomplish the aim. But you’ll frequently discover that different people approach the same objective in different ways and sometimes even have different objectives. When it comes to purchasing clothing, for instance, there are two distinct groups of people: those who buy things just out of necessity and those who buy them because they like the chance and the experience.
Once your final list of personalities is complete, you must ascertain each one’s behaviour. Go over each persona’s notes one at a time, highlight the noteworthy behaviours, write them on Post-Its, adhere the Post-Its to a wall, and organise the noteworthy behaviours that recur. Building your personas around a single, unique participant and adding to them with information from other participants is a smart concept.
Because they are based on the most important objectives and behaviours, deciding what must-dos and must-nevers are left till last. You should consider both how you can assist this person and how you can prevent annoying and perplexing him. Avoid being overly specific when stating must-dos.
For example, “Must use red on the call to action on the product page,” will only assist in making a specific decision. These guidelines ought to be comprehensive enough to support judgements made for the entire website, system, or even company. “Must never overwhelm the user with choice,” for instance.
What’s the simplest way to create a persona?
In any case, the persona document’s actual design ought should be rather straightforward. The quality of the evidence supporting it is what matters most. Here’s a quick approach to use Microsoft Word to show personas if you’re very tight for time or need to get a quick preview out before the final document.
Persona images
Using alternatives to images is the most efficient approach to save time and effort. Finding acceptable images can be difficult and time-consuming if you didn’t gather any during your investigation.
Alternatively, you may symbolise each persona with an icon. Even if it’s not as intimate as a photo, when they’re all pinned to the wall, you can still tell each persona apart.
Document titles
Make the document title the persona name. To keep it realistic, it’s usually a good idea to use the name of a participant you met while conducting the research. (You’ll also discover that you will become fixated on choosing a name.) To make it easier to read when adhered to a wall, choose a large font size of 48 points. Put a user quotation in the subtitle. Reduce the font size to 22 points, which is less than your title. Because this is a supporting piece of information, make the font a lighter shade of grey to give it less importance than anything else. To indicate that this is a user quote, use quotation marks and italics.
Subheadings
For each of the main informational categories (Key Goals, Behaviours, Must Do, Must Never), create a subsection. Once more, use a smaller font (18 points).
Bulleted lists
Display the information in each part using lists with bullets. Both writing and reading may be done more easily using this method. Put each point on a separate line to make a list with bullets. Select the Home tab from the top menu, highlight the text you wish to turn into bullets, and then click Bullets. You can now select the type of bulleted list format that you desire. Unless your arguments are ranked in some way, it is advisable to avoid using numerical lists for your bullets. To adjust the distance between lines in a bulleted list, pick Paragraph from the context menu when you right-click on the bulleted text. The window that appears allows you to modify the Line spacing parameters.
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