User-centered Design
Identifying the target market is an essential part of envisioning what product we will be making, what aspect we will focus on, and what demographic we are targeting.
In our Happy Fresh fleet-tracker project, the application is centered around providing the user a concise interface from which they could track their order being delivered by the driver, giving them an estimate time of arrival; while on the other hand we have the operations team which interest lies in monitoring the efficiency of the driver in delivering their order, whether they are taking alternative routes because of traffic or are just arbitrarily extending the order time.
Persona
Based on the description of our target audience/user, basing our product on the target character’s traits and preference is a very effective way of ensuring the product will be acceptable on the market. This classification of the target market is called a persona. The persona includes a hypothetical bio of the user including their age, preferences, traits, and other aspects which are considered in making the product that would interest them.
In creating a persona, there are some aspects that we will focus on:
- Who is the product designed for
This will be the main demographic of the target market be it workers, students, elderly, etc. The specification of each persona covers their name, age, traits, background, and other data which would be relevant in making the project.
2. What problems do the users face
The idea of creating a persona is so that we, as the product maker, could relate to what problems the user are facing that we are trying to solve. In our particular project, the fleet tracker aims to solve the problem of customers not knowing when their order would be delivered from the store, and the operational team’s lack of information on their drivers’ behavior on duty.
3. What are their goals?
Finding the solutions needed to solve the users’ problems isn’t our only purpose in creating the product. Fulfilling the user’s goals while also ensuring a good product is important as well. In formulating the goals of the user, we could base our estimations on Don Norman’s “Emotional Design Book” which focus on the user’s emotional and cognitive character.
4. What are their behaviors
Further study of the user’s behaviors and traits would enable us to receive the user’s subconscious feedback on our product such as what time they use the product most, why they use it, etc. By conducting this research, we could obtain the pain points for deciding how the product should be.
Creating a Persona
There are some steps in creating a persona:
- Research
Conducting research to gain accurate data from the target demographic is essential. This task is usually done by survey or feedback gained from the product. The data collected could then be processed in the next step to create our persona.
- Identifying patterns
As data starts to gather, we can start identifying the behavioral patterns that the users have. This would lead to deciding which aspect of the product that could be focused on to better serve the users.
- Creation
After thorough analyzing of the data, we could document the findings as a persona. This would include name, bio, occupation, problems, and goals. Other information that could be beneficial in evaluating the product should be included as well.
Here are some examples of the persona we have made for the fleet-tracker project:
That’s all for this article about persona. Creating and analyzing these personas have been very beneficial in the progress of our group, as we could put effort on the specific aspects on our projects that would benefit the users most.
Thanks for reading!
