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.