Luleå University of Technology Design of IT I0006N In-depth study of user persona Sabina Wickforsen Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................... 2. Method..................................................................................... 3. Result ...................................................................................... 3.1 ................................................................................................ 3.2 ................................................................................................. 4. Analysis ................................................................................... 4.1................................................................................................ 4.2 ................................................................................................. 5. .................................................................................................... 6. Discussion ................................................................................ 7. References ............................................................................... Introduction This report is a study about a popular method called user persona. The user persona is a fictional description of a target user. The user persona consists of the user's behavior, goals and motives. And often contains details as a picture and name. It is a commonly used in designprocess that put a lot of emphasis on user experience. The definition of the design process we are going to use in this study is a project that takes place in a corporate setting where the goal is to deliver a solution to a problem for a client. The founder of the method is software designer and programmer Alan Cooper. Cooper is known for his role in humanizing technology through software design. Cooper also created the goal-directed design process that is a step to step model of how to conduct a designprocess with focus on high user satisfaction. There are multiple definitions of user persona even though most have similar principles. In this study we will use Kim Goodwin's definition Personas are archetypes that describe the various goals and observed behavior patterns among your potential users and customers. The study starts with a description on how to create a user persona. What the benefits are and the drawbacks with using this method. Where in the design process it is used and the process they are best suited for. Method This is an in depth study of user persona. The study will investigate, review and describe user persona with the help of literature from scholar Kim Goodwin Designing for the digital age: How to create human-centered products and services, Jenny Preece Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, Mattias Arvolas Interaction design and UX the creation of a good user experience.. How to create user personas and timeline There are several ways you can create user personas, most of them stems from smaller modifications on Coppers takes on how to create a user persona. Their process to create a user persona ranges from Goodwins a couple of weeks to Arvolas that claims it can be done in a couple of days. Kim Goodwin has created a 9 step process on how to create personas. 1. Divide interviewees by role if necessary 2. Identify behavioral and demographic variables for each role 3. Map interviewees to variables 4. Identify and explain potential patterns 5. Capture patterns and define goals 6. Clarity distinctions and add detail 7. Fill in other persona types as needed 8. Group and prioritize personas 9. Develop narrative and other communication tools. Arvola claims that the creation of persona can take a couple of weeks. He also claims that personas are possible to make in a couple of days making it an attractive option for projects with a smaller budget. Goodwin also claims that every user persona should also incorporate a day in the life description of current behaviors relevant to the design problem. Example of a user persona Empati User persona is a method used in the design process to induce empathy for the designers. The method user personas consist of fictional characters that are supposed to represent different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Both Arvola and Goodwin claim that user persona is a powerful tool for designers to emphasize with the users and better understand their needs and obstacles. Instead of designing for a faceless user. User persona gives the user life. Arvola and Goodwin claim that this increases the level of sympathy the designers inhibit, they can now view the users as fellow human beings. Find target audience Goodwin claims it is a good way to make designers aware of their target audience. When you make a user the designer becomes more aware of who they are designing for and their needs. With this knowledge they can focus on making the design as attractive for those users as possible. They can assist the designers in figuring out what design elements to focus on and what features of the design are non-essential. Designprocess that can benefits from user personas Both Arvola and Goodwin claim user persona is a good tool to evaluate the user's experience. Making it beneficial for services with a high level of user interaction as digital services. Due to the increased use of digital technologies and companies that want to focus on optimal resource utilization there has been an increased demand for methods that can evaluate the user experience. Goodwin takes the use of prototyping further than Arvola and claims that user persona is good for the creation of anything that needs human interaction. But of course the more interaction a service needs, the more benefits the process can reek from implementing the method. Goodwin claims it can be used for everything from web sites, services, internal business processes, organizational structures, events, and has been a very popular tool for advertising campaigns. Many marketers adopt personas with great enthusiasm. Some even use the personas as the stars of a marketing campaign. When the user is not the customer The user personas are good in setting when the customer and user are not the same person. Office settings are a good example when the user (the employees) and the customer (typically the owner) are 2 different audiences for the service. A good idea to go around this can be to create 2 different personas, a customer and user persona. When in the design process should you use a user persona The research that goes into forming personas usually happens early in the design process. There are different frameworks from different schools and organizations on how to conduct a designprocess. The user persona place in the design process will also be different. Design thinking The Stanford d. school design thinking process is a method for how to conduct a designprocess that emphasizes user experience. The process uses an approach where peoples' experiences are highly valued and it is similar to user experience design. The designprocess has 5 steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. We can divide 5 steps into 2 smaller categories: Defining the problem and creating the solution. Defining the problem happens during the empathize and define steps. Creating the solution happens during the ideat, prototype and test steps. In the design thinking process user persona are created in the defined step from data created in the empathize step. In this step there is also: role objectives, decision, challenges and pain points. This step is about focusing on solving and defining the core problem the team has identified. User perona are used for the team to allow the designer to engage with the needs of the user throughout the design process. It means that user persona can be used throughout the design process to guide design decisions made by the team. They can be created iteratively throughout the process. Goal-Directed process Goodwin writes about the Goal-Directed process that was created by Alan Cooper. It has 7 steps that can be scaled up or down depending on the process time and resources. The 7 steps are: project planning, research, modeling, requirements definition, framework definition, detailed design and implementation support. Goodwin claims that during the modeling step the most important model is a set of personas. User persona can assist the design team in decision making and also communicate the team's rationale and be tied back to the user persona. She claims that following the steps in the Goal-Directed optimize the creation of concrete solutions to people's problems. Goodwin claims that personas can last a long time and that a company does not need to create new personas every time they create or release a product. Because personas are focused on fundamental behaviors and goals, minor changes in procedures and technologies have almost no effect on them and can be enough to do a little research now and then to make sure the personas are still in sync with reality, define, ideate, prototype and test. Why are user personas a popular method Jenny Preece claims that Anthropomorphism can play a role in why user persona is a popular tool in the design process. Anthropomorphism is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. It is when people give human traits, emotions, or intentions to non human items. Psychologist Adam Waytz and his colleagues created a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism to describe these aspects and predict when people are most likely to anthropomorphize. The three factors are Elicited agent knowledge, or the amount of prior knowledge held about an object and the extent to which that knowledge is called to mind. Effectance, or the drive to interact with and understand one's environment. Sociality, the need to establish social connections. When creating a user persona the designers are using 2 of the 3 factors. Effectance and Sociality. User persona can be considered a kind of Anthropomorphism. We are giving a non life object that is a piece of paper real life human traits and emotions to be able to understand users environment and to establish social contact. Can be expensive with risks The second biggest con is that it might not be worth the time and resources needed to create a good user persona. Especially for smaller projects with a limited budget. To create quality personas can be time consuming as you can see in under the section How to create user personas and there are no good shortcuts when creating user personas.Making a sloopy user persona can in best case be useless and in the worst case scenario negatively affect business turnout. For projects with a limited budget creating a user persona should be carefully evaluated. Goodwin claims that. The good news is that personas can last a long time. Because personas are focused on fundamental behaviors and goals, minor changes in procedures and technologies have almost no effect on them. People may end up falling trap in their own prejudice Just because you know the name and have a pic of a person does not mean that you know them. The persona created may end up being a very flat version of a person or even worse just a stereotypical version of a person. It is important to use persona as a complement and not a stand alone method. If it is not used correctly it can be distracting and shift the focus away from the real users. Discussion I had a very hard time writing this article because I don't understand what is expected from it. That is why I will only send in the article in this unfinished state and you can explain more details about what you want from this article . Reference list Goodwin, K. (2012). Designing for the digital age: How to create human-centered products and services. Indianapolis. Wiley Publishing. Preece, J. (2012). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Lund. Studentlitteratur. Arvolas, M. (2020). Interaktionsdesign och UX : om att skapa en god användarupplevelse. Lund .Studentlitteratur.
