{"id":128,"date":"2012-07-31T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/measuringu.com\/personas-ux\/"},"modified":"2022-03-21T18:22:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T00:22:01","slug":"personas-ux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/personas-ux\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Core Ideas about Personas and The User Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>A public personality, an assumed identity or a character in a novel–the term persona is used widely in our vernacular.<\/p>\n

But, when it comes to User Experience (UX), a persona takes on a more specific meaning.<\/p>\n

Personas are a widely used in UX Research with 65% of practitioners reporting using them<\/a> on projects.<\/p>\n

Here are seven core ideas everyone in the UX field should know about personas.<\/p>\n

1. Personas predate UX Research<\/h2>\n

I was first introduced to personas, like many others in the eponymous field of UX, in the late 90’s from the book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum<\/a> by Alan Cooper. Cooper, however, wasn’t the originator of the concept. It had been around in some form in marketing and advertising for decades.<\/p>\n

At about the same time as Cooper, marketing director Angus Jenkinson developed the concept and methodology of personas for usability in the mid 1990s. Jenkinson had previously introduced the “moment of truth” or “touchpoints” concept in customer relationship management (CRM) in 1988 and first described the idea of personas in a 1994 paper “Beyond Segmentation.”<\/p>\n

Cooper developed a similar concept during this time and, starting in 1995, recommended creating software with a specific, not generic, user in mind.<\/p>\n

A “user” means different things to different people and is often used generically to describe the average customer, which is not the same as a persona. In UX, personas are employed to define and design interactive products. As Alan Cooper says, personas are “profoundly simple but remarkably powerful.” More on the history of persona development<\/a><\/p>\n

2. A persona is not a hypothetical customer invented by the marketing department<\/h2>\n

“Persona” is frequently used interchangeably with “user” although the two terms differ in meaning when it comes to usability.<\/p>\n

Personas (as we use them) are an archetypical user of a system, an example of the type of person who would interact with it. Personas are profiles of fictional characters or people based on ethnographic research, surveys or interviews. Most famously personas get fancy head-shots and names like “Marcus” or “Shannon.” I’ve even seen life-sized personas. The people and pictures can be fictional but the details should be factual.<\/p>\n

Personas are not a list of tasks, duties or responsibilities. They are archetypical users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. They function as stand-ins for real users to guide decisions about design and functionality.<\/p>\n

When you’re busy developing software it’s easy to starting wondering what a hypothetical user could or might do with your application. If you try and build for all users you build for no users. A persona is intended to focus design thinking by posing the question: Would Marcus do this?<\/p>\n

Hear what Alan Cooper has to say about personas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. A persona is not about customer likes and dislikes<\/h2>\n

While you can collect data for personas using surveys, personas are not based on what customers like or don’t like about a company, website or product.<\/p>\n

Personas concentrate on what a user does, what frustrates the user, and what gives the user satisfaction. A good persona is a narrative that describes a person’s typical day and experiences, as well as skills, attitude, background, environment, and goals. Personas identify the person’s motivations, expectations, aspirations and behaviors. Personas bring the “user” to life, providing a specific target to aid developers in designing a final product.<\/p>\n

4. Personas answer very specific questions<\/h2>\n

Personas are able to provide details to important questions that a “user” cannot define.<\/p>\n