Creating iterative personas to help shape prototyping
Good enough for now, safe enough to try
In this project focused on helping people claim Universal Credit remotely (details) we are using personas:
A persona… in user-centered design and marketing is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.
They’re a useful way to get past anecdotes, the ‘cool ideas’ of the highest-paid people in your organisation, and bring insights from user interviews into the process.
While some people believe that you should kill your personas in favour of ‘persona spectrums’ we believe that taking an iterative approach to personas works best.
For example, here are four personas in Week 4 of the project, during the Discover phase. They’re based on user interviews carried out by the digital team, as well the expertise and insights from the representatives of the four charities with which we’re working.
Just as a map can never be the territory, no persona is perfect (or finished!). However we know that it’s possible to create better and more useful maps over time, and you can create better and more useful personas. The trick is to keep revisiting them.
The week after creating the above end-user personas, we focused on Universal Credit advisers, both formal and informal. Again, we used the insights from user research and our charity representatives to create these.
In a short project like this (11 weeks!) it’s important to stick to the mantra “good enough for now, safe enough to try”. With these six personas the project team has something to help develop our ideas for prototypes.
At the same time, we’re aware that we need to keep iterating the personas as we learn more about both our problems to be solved and the wants and needs of users.
If you have any questions about the project, or expertise to lend us during the short 11-week process, please get in touch: hello@dynamicskillset.com
