Persona Creation Method
A persona is a fictional, yet reliable and realistic description of a target user. Unlike marketing personas based purely on demographics, design personas based on qualitative and quantitative research and describe the user’s motivations and how they accomplish tasks.
Personas ground design in reality by forcing us to consider the goals, behaviors, and pain points of the people affected by our design decisions. Effective personas typically:
- Represent a major user group for your website
- Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups
- Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the site
- Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality
- Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values
Preparation
Persona Creation is often more effective when it is informed by these complementary methods.
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Task Analysis
Observe users in action to understand how they perform tasks to achieve goals
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Journey Mapping
Explore and communicate a user’s experience with a service or product over time
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Stakeholder Interviewing
Understanding the perspective and influence of those invested in a project's success
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Contextual Interviewing
Observation of users performing tasks in their own environment
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Scenarios
A specific user's context, motivations, and goals for visiting a website or app
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First Click Testing
Discover what users interact with first when they land on your web page
Steps
Gather research from earlier activities like contextual inquiry or stakeholder interviews in a way that’s easy to review.
- Create an initial set of user archetypes based on how you believe people will use your solution.
- Analyze your research for patterns as they relate to user archetypes. Specifically note frequently observed goals, motivations, behaviors, and pain points.
- Pair recurring goals, behaviors, and pain points with archetypes. Give each archetype a name and add a fictional account of how they accomplish tasks throughout their day. Add a photo of someone who fits the description, but ideally not an image of someone you’ve actually interviewed and who may be recognized.
- Link your personas to the research that inspired them. This is useful when researchers are interested in challenging the way a persona stereotypes a user.
Outcomes
Persona Creation typically produces insight and solutions focused on these areas:
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User Preference
Elements, arrangements, or qualities of experience design that user state or show are valuable to them.
Resources
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Just-Right Personas: How to Choose the Scope of Your Personas
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Personas Need a Purpose: Why you shouldn’t try to make personas that cover the whole company
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How To Create Customer Personas (with Actual, Real-Life Data)
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3 Persona Types: Lightweight, Qualitative, and Statistical
Next Steps
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Category Design
Creating structures and schemes that make the location and use of content clear.
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Taxonomy Design
Define a system for labeling and classifying content to make it easier to find, understand, and use
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Style Tile Creation
Communicate the use of fonts, colors, and interface elements in a design system
References
Persona Creation Method details last edited on 2022-01-09