using personas to craft a superior user experience v1 0 en

8/2/2019 Using Personas to Craft a Superior User Experience v1 0 En

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Personas 101Using personas to crafta superior user experience


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I dont know the key to success butthe key to failure is trying to pleaseeverybody.

Bill Cosby, US comedian


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What is a persona?

A persona is a character involved withyour product or service.

A persona typically has a name, a photo,personal details, and a collection of goals

and behaviour-related information.

These details make the persona memorable,and bring the character to life.


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Creating and using personasduring the design and

development process can helpyour product in many ways.


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Why use personas? 1/3

Personascreate

empathy

for the usersof your product.

Users become real people, with real needsand behaviour. This reduces the likelihood

that you will arbitrarily introduce unrealistic

features or behaviour into your product.


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Example: Paul is a salesman who travels almost everyweek. To ensure easy access to his mail from anywhere,Paul only uses web-based email programs like Ovi Mail.

Your product is an email manager that requires dailysynchronisation with a hard drive. Will this product reallysuit Pauls needs and behaviours?


Personas help you align product decisionsto a specific person and behaviour. They canalso help resolve disagreements aroundfeatures by asking Would our persona reallybehave like this?.


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Personas help you communicate the reasons

behind your design decisions to stakeholders.

Personas combined with scenarios help youtell the story of your productwho will use it,

when, and most importantly, why.

This type of information can be useful inobtaining buy-in from stakeholders, but can

also assist early marketing efforts.


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Getting started


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Where to find personas

Personas should ideally be based on

real people, with similar goals or behaviour

that you have met throughout your design

research.

If you have no research to inform the creationof your personas, try to base them on people

that you personally know, or have observed

in the past.


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What about demographic groups?

Demographics is the statistical study of a

population using factors such as age, gender,

income, schooling, and occupation.

When creating personas, avoid focussingon demographic factors, unless they are

specifically relevant to your product.


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Example 1/5Meet Mary and Selena


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Example 2/5Mary, 21 years old

Brussels, BelgiumOccupation:

Mary is studying to be a dentist.

Music habits:

Mary has a large music collection but is acasual music listener. She most often listens

to music while exercising and traveling to

University by train. She enjoys listening to

the same albums over and over, so she

doesnt spend much time creating playlists.


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Occupation:

Selena is studying law.

Music habits:

Selena is crazy about music. She has a huge,carefully organised collection of albums

spanning many genres. She also loves live

music. She and her friends attend gigs and

concerts every weekend and often take

photos of the performances, which theythen share amongst themselves.

Example 3/5Selena, 21 years old

Paris, France


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Example 4/5Demographics dont matter for Mary and Selena

Mary and Selena are the same age, same gender,

live in major European cities, and are both studying

at University. When it comes to music however, they

have very different needs and behaviour.A music service which only focusses on their

demographics (i.e. young, urban, well educated

women who enjoy music), will not necessarily tap

into the factors that could make Mary and Selena

fall in love with the service.


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Example 5/5Should we completely ignore demographics?

Example: Your product is a subscription-basedentertainment service. Your research has shown that

young people aged 14-24 love to follow entertainment

news and watch related trailers or videos. In this case

your personas age is quite relevant. With no credit card,

how will a 14-year-old pay for the monthly subscription?

Only focus on demographic factors that are

specifically relevant to your product.


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Creating your personas


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What to include

a photo

name, age, gender

location

family ties

profession

lifestyle

These simple andprimarily demographic

details provide context,

put a face to the name,

and bring the

character to life.


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What to include

personality traits

media and technologychoices

goals, behaviour ormotivations in relationto life, and to your

product

differentiators

These details trulydifferentiate one

persona from another,

and will turn them

into real persons

in the eyes of your

team. They will also

inform how your

product could fit into

the persons life.


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The differentiator

Each persona should be representative

of a common user of your productbut should

have one factor that differentiates them

from the others.

This factor should not be an edge case.It should be common enough that it will

actually matter to your product.


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Edge case or differentiator? 1/2

Paul is a performance artist. He likes to play music

tracks backwards during his performances and

would like a music service that enables him to

listen to tracks this way.

Is this an edge case? Pauls behaviour illustrates the

value of design research. Chances are, his behaviour is

too rare to consider in your product design, but through

user research, you might already have come to this

conclusion by talking to other music lovers.


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Edge case or differentiator? 2/2

A product decision for Simons persona

Introducing a tagging system would enable Simon

to tag and find his songs by mood, while also enabling

his wife to do so by release date. Research will likely

confirm that most users would appreciate this level

of flexibility.

Simon is a music lover. He has a huge collection of

music which he shares with his wife. She likes to

organise music by release date, while Simon prefers

to organise it by mood (for instance happy, romantic).


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How many personas do you need?

Two or three personas are often enough to

suit all the critical activities and behaviour

your product is meant to support.

If needed, you can create more than three.However, keep in mind that the more peopleyou try to satisfy with one product, the harder

it will be to truly please any of them.


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Example: Three personas

An email program may have three personas.

The BeginnerThis person is newto the software, and

needs to set up anaccount and send aninitial message.

The power-userThis person requiresadvanced features

such as filters,conversation views,and signatures.

The occasional userThis person rarelyuses email and may

have forgotten howthe product works.


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Organising personas

Where possible, choose a primary and

secondary persona.

Your primary persona representsthe goalsof most of your users. This persona will guide

most of the product and feature decisions.

Your goal when designing the product is tofully satisfy all this personas needs.


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The secondary persona

Secondary personas may have similar goals

as the primary persona, but there will always

be a differentiator.

Features designed for the secondary personamay not completely suit the primary persona,but should not inconvenience them.

The opposite should of course also be true. Features that

help a persona complete a task, while inconveniencingone of the other personas, should be reconsidered.


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Example: Organising personas

You are designing a mobile email application

aimed at the enterprise market.

Primary persona: The power-userThis persona requires advanced features such as filters, multiple

accounts, and conversation views.

Secondary persona: The beginnerThis persona is new to the software, and needs to set up an accountand send an initial message. A wizard which appears when theapplication is first launched could help this user achieve those goalswhile not getting in the way of the primary persona.


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Using personas


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When to create personas

If youre informing your design through

research, create your personas once the

research is complete and base them on people

you have interviewed or observed.

If youre unable to do research, createpreliminary personas based on people you

know, then revise the personas as you gain

additional insights through research, user

testing, or observation.


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How to use personas

Share personas with your entire team.

Use personas in your product scenarios.Think about whether this persona would

behave as your scenario suggests, and

be sure to create scenarios involving all yourpersonas in some way.

Where possible, live with the personas.Print them out, bring them to meetings, andplace them on the wall along with project

scenarios.


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Appendix: Persona examples

A series of personas for a social music service.The service provides users with access to

millions of songs, and enables them to createplaylists which they can share with friends.


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Primary persona: Selena


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The fan 1/2

Name: SelenaAge: 21

Location: Paris, France

Occupation: Selena is studying law.

Personality: Optimistic, highly social, and exploratory.

Income: Selena lives in a flat with two of her friends. The flat is paid forby her friends father who works as an estate agent, so Selenas only

costs are food and utilities. She also receives a monthly allowance from

her parents, which she primarily spends on entertainment.

Devices: Selena has a Nokia N97, which she chose for its QWERTYkeyboard and home screen widgets. These come in handy when

coordinating her busy social life using SMS and a variety of social

networking services.

Music is why I live in a big city. I spend my weekends in clubs and met most

of my friends at concerts. My life outside of school, is all music, all the time.


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The fan 2/2

Musical tastes: Selena seeks out every indie band she can find, but also

enjoys vintage blues and jazz. Shes always willing to sample music

recommended by her friends, but draws the line at pop which she feelsis for kids.

Life: School is a big part of Selenas life, but it certainly can be hard to

get up in the morning after a night out with friends. Selena plans to

focus more on entertainment law next year, with the goal of obtainingan internship with one of the major music labels.

Live music: Selena attends lots of live performances and loves to take

pictures of the performers and the crowd. She recently bought a

professional auto-focus camera but finds that when the time comes to

go out, she usually leaves it behind. After all, her trusted N97 takes great

photos, and is always in her pocket.


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Secondary persona: Mary


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The casual listener 1/2

Name: MaryAge: 21

Location: Brussels, Belgium

Occupation: Mary is a studying to be a dentist.

Personality: Practical, playful, and sentimental.

Income: Mary comes from a single-parent family, so she has qualified fora student grant, which pays for her tuition, apartment, and day-to-day

expenses. She also works 15 hours a week as a clerk in a veterinary clinic.

She uses this additional income to buy clothes and go out on weekends,

and is saving a small portion every month for a summer trip to Portugal.

Devices: Mary has a Nokia 5000. She loves it because its small, has a nice

music player, and can be hidden in her pocket while in class or at work.

The FM radio is also handy for catching the news at break times.

Im too busy to organise musicbesides, it doesnt matter to me.

I only buy albums I really like so dont mind listening to them over and over.


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The casual listener 2/2

Musical tastes: Mary enjoys classical, jazz, folk but also some top artists

in the pop charts. Despite her varied tastes, shes isnt experimental with

music. Once she finds an album she likes, she listens to it over and over.Mary would love a way to carry more music, but she isnt ready to buy

a separate music player or change mobiles.

Lifestyle: School and work currently occupy most of Marys life. The fact

that Mary lives in suburban Brussels doesnt help matters, as she spendsclose to two hours commuting every day. Any free time is spent with her

boyfriend who luckily attends the same university.

Exercise: Exercise helps Mary relax, and with an erratic schedule, her

activity of choice is running. On busy days, she runs to the train station

instead of taking the bus, or goes for a run during her lunch break.

She always listens to music while exercising, but the music has to be

just right, otherwise she finds it distracting.


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Discover more aboutdesigning for mobile atforum.nokia.com/designcenter
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