In “How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects, Part 1″ I wrote about the three main components of effective personas: A name, a face, and an ecology (biographical data, lifestyle, and preferences). In “How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects, Part 2″ I blogged about the ways in which information can be collected to inform your personas: contextual interviews, task analysis, interviews, surveys, and other sources.

Now I’ll cover ways in which personas can be used during the project lifecycle to help guide design and content decisions. It’s an obvious statement but everything done during a project should be done to satisfy the target audience; and keeping your personas front and center will help you and your team stay focused on that goal. (more…)

In “How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects, Part 1″ I wrote about the three main components of effective personas: A name, a face, and an ecology (biographical data, lifestyle, and preferences). Creating personas that are a reflection of real people helps us as web designers and developers to empathize with our end users and more easily consider needs, goals, and priorities that may be different than our own. These are critical skills to have since we may not be part of the target audience for the site we’re developing.

Personas: Who Makes This Stuff Up?

While the information we write about a particular persona is fictional it must have its basis in reality. If we’re building a new website then we should have some idea about the target audience. In a perfect world the Information Architects, User Experience Designers, or other user-focused team members would be able to talk to some of the end users (or potential end users). There are several structured methods for collecting information about end users: contextual interviews, task analysis, focus groups, and surveys. (more…)

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” -Oscar Wilde

I don’t know how to say it any more plainly than this: Creating personas are important.

The persona is so important because it affects so many other pieces of the project- discovery, design, QA, and even search engine optimization. A persona is the answer to the question “who are we doing all this work for?”. What you know about him or her will inform your choices about how your site will be found, how it will look and how it will function. Budgeting for personas is always time and money well spent.

Components of a Good Persona

Personas can take many different forms and I think the best personas contain at least these three things:

• A persona has a name. Don’t confuse personas with “user roles” or categories. “Authenticated User” is not a persona. “Ralph Perez” is. The persona will fit into one of your user roles and he will exhibit other traits and abilities beyond that role.
• A persona has a photo. Your persona is a human- put a face to the name and you’ll be better able to empathize with him or her. I use istockphoto.com for inexpensive photo images (I can usually find something for about $1).
• A persona has an ecology. The demographic data you specify for your persona will also, by inference, provide meta-data about the world he or she lives in. Take the time to desribe this world. Creating a basic story that includes education, family life, work, interests/hobbies, and physical characteristics (including handicaps) adds more dimension to the character and gives us more options when making creative choices. It’s those other qualities that may influence his behavior when searcing for or using the site. (more…)