A Bi-Monthly Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2003
STC WVC Home> Newsletter
Table of Contents>User Personas
User Personas
By Katherine Stevens
Designing a Web site, technical documentation, or a training program for a wide variety of users is challenging. One method that will help you make decisions about format, organization, content, navigation, and interaction is to create user personas. A persona is a description of an archetypal user. Each persona has a name and is a specific, vivid description about the person’s work situation, job, attitudes, and personality.
For example, if you want to describe retail store representatives who sell computers, you might create the following persona:
Jeremy is 20 years old and single. He takes classes at the community college and lives at home. He works 30 hours a week as a sales rep. for CompUSA. He got the job to make the car payments for his new SUV. (He traded in the 10-year-old Toyota Camry that his parents gave him in high school.) He likes technology and would buy more if he could afford it. He’s an avid gamer. Between his computer, PDA, and cell phone, he always has access to a game. He likes movies, and the Matrix is one of his favorites. He’s not sure what he wants to be when he grows up. He wonders if it’s possible to be a professional reality TV contestant, and sent in a demo tape to one of the shows. He’s overly confident and sometimes arrogant about his knowledge of computers.
You will probably need to create 2 to 4 personas to represent a large or diverse audience. You can craft a persona based on an actual person or a composite. For example, another sales representative persona might be “Zach” who works at same store while he is trying to become a Microsoft Certified Engineer. This is the third computer retailer Zach has worked at during the last two years.
Personas help you make design decisions by allowing you to evaluate choices based on how each persona will respond. Rather than trying to evaluate how thousands will respond to the design, you can concentrate on creating a design that works well for each persona. For example, if you were creating information about a new software product, you might evaluate how well Jeremy will be able to access the information on his PDA and whether Zach will be able to access the information from the PC in the training room at the store
Guidelines
Creating a Persona
Be specific when creating a persona. Give each persona a name and provide details about:
- Age, sex, martial status
- Job situation and work environment
- Interests, hobbies, home life
- Goals, behavior, and feelings
- Skills and attitudes
Don't worry about political correctness when creating personas. If the audience is nurses, then use a woman in the persona. If the average electrician is 45 and male, then one of your personas should be. Later when you design and create the solution, you can include images and writing that respects diversity.
Other References
Perfecting Your Personas
www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/perfecting_your_personas.htm
Reconciling Market Segments and Personas
www.cooper.com/newsletters/2002_02/reconciling_market_segments_and_personas.htm
Personas Practice and Theory
Microsoft’s experience using personas
http://research.microsoft.com/research/coet/Grudin/Personas/Pruitt-Grudin.pdf
Personas & Scenarios
www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archive/000019.html
Katherine Stevens is an instructional designer at CMD, an integrated marketing communications agency (www.cmdagency.com). Katherine has over 10 years experience in designing e-learning. She also teaches at Portland State University in the Training and Development certificate program. Katherine can be reached at kstevens@cmdpdx.com.
