Personas

Actors and roles seem a bit abstract. It's harder to put a face on them, to understand details about them that may have bearing on the design of a product. Profiling an actor or role begins to add this additional detail. But, an profile can still be somewhat abstract. For instance, a profile may refer to 18-27 year, men or women, with varying computer experience, and varying economic backgrounds. That variance may make it tougher to make design decisions.

Creating a person remedies this by selecting specific details from a profile and using those details to create a archetype of a specific fictitious person that "personifies" the group of users within a user constituency. A profile composed of 18-27 year old mend and women with varying computer experience and economic backgrounds might be personified by:

Selecting specific details focuses design

It's difficult to design for a large group. Trying to satisfy everyone is the road to disaster. Using a persona to target your design allows you to focus on satisfying a single individual. The goal is a strong coherent design that subsequently satisfied most people in its primary user constituency. This rather than a design that looks like it's trying to make allowances for too many types of people.

Select representative details

For a group of users within a category of information, there will be some variance. But, it's common to see clusters or areas where a higher density of people within in a similar range exist.

Let me be more concrete.

Let's say we're designing an application used by largish organizations to process accounts payable. The typical accounts payable clerk's computer experience may vary wildly from absolute novice to expert. But, if we were to arrange this group on a curve, we might find there are a large number with moderate computers skills, a reasonable number of novices, and very few experts. A curve might look something like this.

When personifying this group, it makes sense to describe a person with moderate computer skills - someone who's pretty comfortable using a computer, but not the person you'd call on when you can't get your laptop to connect to the Starbuck's WiFi.

Choosing a specific data point from this group of users will focus your design so it doesn't cater to absolute novices, or proficient experts, and is most likely to work well for the great majority of AP clerks in your target user constituency.

Create personas by making relevant representative information concrete

Create a persona by leveraging profile information and choosing a representative subset of information from each profile characteristic. Connect this representative information together using concise prose. Describe your person in a way that makes them seem concrete.

As you describe your representative person, keep in mind the information needs to be relevant to the design of this product. Including information about the car they drive might be relevant to the design of a handheld product often used in a car, but irrelevant to an accounts payable processing system.

Keep the profile short and easily consumable by its reader.

Make the persona sticky with a name, pictures, quotes, and stories

Give your persona a name. This allows you to refer to him or her in first person. Not only does this help consumers of the persona better identify, but it'll shorten lots of conversations you'll be having about this user constituency. Instead of saying business people who travel often, you can say "Duncan." Choose a memorable name - but not too out of the ordinary.

Add a photograph into the persona to give this persona a face. Let your reader look into the personas eyes.

You can select an image from a variety of sources. When I'm building something for internal use, I'll fall back on a Google image search. But, if I suspect the image might get out of my company, and I'm concerned with potential licensing issues for the photo, I'll rely on a source for clip-art images. Currently I use iPhoto.

Select a photo that shows more than your persona's face. Show your persona in context where they're likely to spend time using the product you're designing. A photo of a traveling businessman using a laptop in an airport is a more powerful image than a close-up of a man that looks like he could be a businessman.

Attach quotes to your persona delivered in first person by him or her. Select a quote where the persona says something about their goals, pain points, or needs. You might also select a quote that helps illustrate a detail relevant to design.

If we were building time tracking software for Duncan, he might say:

"The half hour wait for the plan Friday afternoon is when I like to get my time and expenses taken care of so I can enjoy the weekend with my family."

If I were building time tracking software for Duncan, I now know he uses it on a laptop, likely in a busy airport, may or may not have internet access, and wants it to be quick enough to use that he can complete it in a few minutes. I may know someone like Duncan. Even if I don't, I can look into his eyes, hear his voice, and begin to imagine the sort of software that could satisfy him.

I find that if I've gathered information by talking to a few Duncans that I'll have lots of quotes in my notes that I can use. Stitch a couple quotes together that clearly identify user needs in their voice.

Adding in an anecdotal story further makes the persona more tangible and memorable. Use a story told to you by a potential user of your product. As with quotes, you may blend together a couple stories you've heard. Choose a story that helps illustrate the need the user has for this product.

When selecting representative profile details, look for details that compel multiple personas

When looking at profile details you may find a wide variance in a certain interesting area. This may be an opportunity to split a profile into multiple personas.

For example, assume we're building a new service in our college campus website. We've profiled students and we see a wide variance in computer experience and skills. Computer skills seem pretty relevant to downstream design choices. I may choose to create two personas. The first may have strong computer skills. The second may be downright computer phobic. We're then left with the decision of which of these users we consider more critical to the design of this software. You can see also that the value of the persona we create might extend far past the software to give us guidance on how we might publicize or market this new service.

While looking at profile data, look for relevant variances in characteristics as well as interesting correlations. If you've helped conduct interviews or gather other research data, you'll begin to see patterns, or distinctions that make a difference in your design that compel you to create multiple personas for the same type of actor or role.