Persona — Know Your User
What is a persona? In software development, we usually has the user requirements and create a software that meets the requirements. Then how about User Interface (UI) or User Experience (UX) design? What is involved in making design decisions? User feedback! Then how about initial design decisions when nobody uses our software yet? Persona!
Persona is a fictional profile to represent our user. We could define details such as name, age, background, behavior, motivation, pain points, or goals. These details could be created through research and analyzing those who will be our users. By defining persona, it is easier to make a design decisions such as which element is more important or what feature is most preferred. All the decisions will be made to satisfy our user, by following the persona.
In our project, LEARNFAZZ, we also use persona to determine design decisions. LEARNFAZZ is a social media e-learning platform, which we have courses and students to study in the course. So, our users might be lecturers and students.
From the two personas we have created, we could gain some design insights. Since the student and lecturer both have the same frustration about student being too afraid or shy to ask questions, we might want to find a way to resolve this issue first.
The issue to ask a question drive our UI/UX design in LEARNFAZZ. We then design it to be easy to ask a question and it is wrapped as a post, or comment like the ones we used in social media. This way, we hope student won’t be too afraid/shy to ask a question and it is also along the goal of the lecturer which the students will be able to help each other.
Hope this post help to understand what a persona is and the benefits of having a persona in your project. For further reading please refer to the references section.
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