“A persona is not a real person; in a designer’s mind, they might as well be”

Personas in Design

In the design world, Personas are a hot buzzword right now. A persona in psychology is defined as social role or a character played by a character. The word originated from latin for theatrical mask.
Personas in design represent a set of users who exhibit similar behavioural characteristics and are used to communicate needs and summarise observed patterns and trends which can then be analysed in order to spearhead the design .

Origin of Personas

If we look into the origins of personas, we find that they have their roots in marketing. Marketers and market researchers have long used customer profiling as a key way to understand their target audience in detail. In software, personas were informally developed by Alan Cooper who during his free time when the code compiled tried to put himself in the shoes of the end users to understand better how they’d use the software he built. Personas in design evolved around mid 90s when designers looking to build products that provided a great experience to users.

Why do we use Personas

Personas were traditionally used in marketing to understand the innate behavioural aspects of the target audience in order to present and market the product better and entice the users to buy products. In design, personas are used due to their informative nature. A persona is not a real person but a combination of characteristics, behaviours and patterns. It is very common for designers and their clients to get carried away with a myriad of design inspirations at their disposal to try and experiment with features and design patterns, however that will more often end up making the product unusable or one that does not create the delightful experience they were aiming for. Personas help create a sense of empathy towards the user and keep the focus on the user and their needs and problems.

How to create Personas

Persona creation is never a standardised process. Just as each project is different in terms of the requirements they have, the problems they face etc, each of the personas created, their objectives, goals are deeply driven by the following:
- Who your users are
- The type of research conducted and the observations recorded.
- What the users are trying to achieve and which of their problems are you solving

Once the above data is obtained, research is then analysed for any emerging patterns. Once a trend is seen, patterns are collated and categorised either by physical sticky notes or digitally. In addition to research, general user behaviours and patterns are observed. User stories, scenarios and even incidents involving the users are explored to understand how the user reacts under various situations. Personalities are given so that the personas are easily identifiable.

In one of my projects, we were designing a product for a media company that wanted to redesign their news website to cater from just a regional audience to a national audience. So here is how I went about creating the personas.

• Understand your target users — Our current user base was regional hence about 50% of our users whom we interviewed were readers hailing from smaller towns and had the habit of in native language of Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. The rest of our user base was more cosmopolitan and their readership was mostly english.
• Observe Patterns — Many of our regional user base was highly interested in local politics and entertainment. They had a very strong affinity towards their native language as compared to the other reader group. They wanted to understand more and read more in native languages and hence wanted translations.
• Understand Habits — Most of users liked the feel of real paper and more often than not, reading a physical newspaper was a habit that formed from childhood when they were encouraged by their parents or grandparents. This was a ritual for most people who wanted to retain it and were not highly encouraged to move to digital.
• Technical proficiency — While designing for digital devices, it is necessary to understand the devices, platforms used and technical knowledge of your users in order to make things much easier and avoid intimidating them.
• Take into account the Must Have and Must Never — Each users will have certain must haves that must be implemented and certain negative points that must be avoided, In our cases, must haves included trending news, personalisation, ability to archive and must avoid included intrusive ads and clutter.
• Understand what problems the users face — Including current problem points in your persona helps you to keep track of them in order to come to an optimum solution. Many of our users had problems finding local news easily
• Create a list of UX goals- What would create a great experience for this category of users. How would you define their experience. what excites the users. These goals helps us keep focus on the most important needs so that we can create a great experience

Personas when used right are a brilliant tool to help us design lean and create an experience that keeps users coming back again and again to use the product and be delighted each time they do so.