Persona
“Design isn’t finished until somebody is using it.” — Brenda Laurel, PhD, Independent Scholar
To make an application or a system, designer doesn’t only pay attention to the user interface or an attractive appearance, but also needs to pay attention to how the experience will be given by the application to the user or we can call it as user experience. For example, if an online clothing store website application has a good user interface with an attractive appearance, but when the user wants to make a purchase there are many steps that need to be done. This of course creates an unpleasant experience for the user. In order to avoid something like this it is necessary to know and understand who the target user or application user is. Therefore, persona is the right way to solve the problem
What is Persona
Persona is a user representation of the application that will be designed. Persona represents an imaginary individual that contains a brief summary of the user’s actual characteristics, experiences, goals, tasks, pain points, and environmental conditions. Persona is created based on analysis and categorization of user data carefully (not from estimation). The goal of a persona is to create a realistic and reliable depiction of user segment for reference.
History of Persona
“Personas are the single most powerful design tool that we use. They are the foundation for all subsequent goal-directed design. Personas allow us to see the scope and nature of the design problem… [They] are the bright light under which we do surgery.” — Alan Cooper, Software designer, programmer and the “Father of Visual Basic”
Persona’s concept is informally developed by Alan Cooper in 1980s. He used persona to understand and internalize user’s mindset and made user as the main focus in application design. According to Mulder and Ziv Yaar (2006), in designing user-oriented applications, the target user must think that the target user is not the same as the application designer. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research on users in order to better understand the target users.
Types of Persona
- Qualitative Persona: created based on user qualitative research
- Statistical Persona: created based on qualitative and quantitative user research that involve statistical test
- Proto Persona: made based on secondary research and assumptions that owned by UX designer
- Design Persona: focused into user goals, current behavior, and pain points
- Marketing Persona: focused on information demographics, buying behavior, preferences and motivation
What Persona is Used For?
Some of the things that can be found from the existence of a persona are as follows:
- Empathy building
- Creating a focus
- Established communication and achieving consensus
- Decision made
- Measuring effectiveness
These following are the uses of persona for several job positions:
- UI Designer: reference in designing the ‘look and feel’ appearance
- Project Leader: evaluating new feature ideas in application design
- Copy Writer: write the right content to the right
- System Engineer: determine the right approach according to user behavior
- Information Architect: reference in designing wireframes, interface behavior, and labeling
What is the Measure of a Good Persona?
- Representative
- Describing clearly
- Realistic description
- Focusing into major needs
- Focusing into important users
- Focusing into current state
- Help to understand user
When to Create Persona?
The best guideline when to create persona is as fast as possible. Persona’s creation process should be a part of the research phase for a product or feature. Persona can be derived from field studies, surveys, longitudinal studies, interviews, and other research methods. Any data obtained may be misleading and must be verified using other methods.
How to Create Persona?
First of all, we should start identifying characteristics from user-research activities. Then, we should group those attributes into clusters to categorize and create a clearly character. If any of them is too similar, group them together and if any of them is unnecessary for business, you can remove them. Once distinct roles emerge, add details to make the character more realistic, believable, and memorable. Common pieces of information that must be included are:
- Name, age, gender, and photo
- Tag line describing what they do in real life
- Experience level in the area of your product or service
- Context for how they would interact with your product
- Goals and concern when they perform relevant tasks
- Quotes to represent persona’s attitude
Example
Persona in my Software Engineering Project (PPL)
The persona above describes the problems experienced by one of the fasilkom students. The main problem she has is that she is confused about taking courses in the next semester based on the courses she has passed with the current curriculum. Therefore, she needs to prepare a schedule for next semester with course recommendations for her.
Why we need user profile and bio?
By depicting real users, a product designer can more easily understand them. Designers know who their target market is. In this case, the target in question is students. From the target data, there is a lot of information that can be used as an idea. An example is that Angelia is a 6th semester student, this can imply that a 6th semester student has completed all of her compulsory courses so that an idea arises that a course should be divided into compulsory and specialization. The more information obtained, the more implications or ideas that can be found.
Why we need problem and need section?
In planning to make a product, of course a designer cannot always position himself as a person who has problems. Therefore, it takes people who experience the problem directly to be asked what their difficulties and needs are in solving this problem. With user needs in personas, the development team can also identify and prioritize changes based on needs. In addition, the marketing team can use it in formulating effective marketing strategies such as suitable marketing keywords.
These are all important information to know about persona based on what I have read and explored. I hope we know how important persona is before designing an application or a system. Hope this article will be useful for us.
References:
- https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/personas
- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona/
- Slide of Persona — Human Computer Interaction by Faculty of Computer Science University of Indonesia