Persona

A defined group of people that exhibit certain behaviors and goals developed from patterns discovered in user research. Personas are humanized tools to guide design and help identify with your audience. They allow us to talk in human terms about a large cross-section of your user population by creating a hypothetical person. Each persona identifies with a specific user base of a product. Expect to have multiple personas per product.

When to Use

To share identified user types that have distinct behavioral and personal character that lead to different user needs and goals important to solution creation.

Steps

Collect data from discovery research with your target users.
Identify the common behavioral variables that are relevant to the product. It is tempting to focus on demographic information like age and income, but behavior matters more.
Map research participants to the behavioral variables that they exhibited.
Identify behavior patterns between the behavior variables previously identified. Focus on user needs, goals, and context of use.
Synthesize and combine behavioral and personal characteristics into one persona. Make multiple personas for each identified user type.
Iterate and continue to add more details.

Additional Notes

Personas are the most misused UX methods. Common issues are not involving users or focusing on demographic information that doesn’t pertain to your product. Though personas have their flaws they capture difference among the user types that could directly impact the solution required to solve their job to be done.

References

Templates (if applicable)

Created by: Joe Steinkamp | Last updated by: Joe Steinkamp