User Persona
User Persona
❖ What is Persona?
Persona is one or several fictive characters created based on your research to represent and generalize groups of target users of the product.
A persona is an archetype instead of an actual living human, but personas should be described as if they were real people. It doesn’t need to include every aspect of the imaginary individual’s life, but focus on those characteristics that impact what is being designed. Personas is used to lay the foundation for user empathy and understanding.
❖ Why we need Persona?
Purpose and function of Persona
The purpose of Persona is to create reliable and realistic representation of our key customer segments for reference.
- Persona helps us understand our users’ needs, motivations, experiences, behaviors and goals, which is fundamental to creating exceptional products that better meets the specific needs or desires of our actual users. We will find out what disturbs them and help to solve their problems.
- Particularly, Persona offers differing advantages to various roles in a project.Product managers may come up with better feature ideas and prioritize them. By maintaining and updating the persona, they can eliminate irrelevant features. UX Designers get necessary information from persona to design the process and decide what they have to consider during the design (Why, What and How of product use).UI Designers crafts beautiful appealing design to create the overall look and feel of the application from a user-centered point of view.Developers put their focus back on user behaviors during the function design, and make products conform to user requirements.
➜ Personas can prevent designers and developers from applying their own mental models to the product design; instead, creating more empathy about the real customers using the products.
❖ How to create persona?
The persona creation process will be explained in more details by applying to a case study about a meditation application, which helps users access to scientific well-being technology measuring their well-being.
❖ Set demographics info
A great place to start the design process is the demographics info, which is based on the user research. This section includes:
- Personal background: age, gender, ethnicity, education, and family status, etc.Professional background: job occupation, income level, and work experience, etc.Technological context of the user: e.g the devices the user uses to access the application.
Age: 38
Work: Marketing Manager
Family: Married, 2 kids
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Technology: Smartphone, laptop (iOS)
Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+
❖ Find out persona problems
Clearly define user problems that you solve through the application. You should make a list of issues then narrow down it by using prioritization method and removing unremarkable ones.
Have trouble falling asleep
Feel distracted at work
Do not have enough time to go to the gym or yoga class
Lack of a multi-feature application that integrates a wide range of functions
❖ Define persona needs
Derive persona needs from these defined problems.
Need an integrated app that collects all body parameters( Brainwave, heart, oxygen, energy, etc.)
Know the impact of the exercises on the body
❖ Define persona goal
Goal is the driving force that motivates users to use the application. It presents what users want to accomplish through the application.
Maximize sleep quality
Reduce stress
Increase concentration and creativity at work
Track and improve health
Want to be reminded the time to relax everyday
❖ Define context usage
Describes how users interact with the application in a particular context to achieve their goals. In more details, you should define the environment, time, and place users use the application.
Use the app as the replacement of traditional meditation class due to busy schedule
Take meditation and yoga exercise any time and anywhere with a mobile device
Take exercises even on a business trip
❖ Figure out persona fears
Find out what your users frustrate would help you win their hearts and gain competitive advantage against other competitors.
Have to use many devices to measure body parameters (Brainwaves, Heart, Oxygen, Energy, etc.)
Working late and hard to sleep
Easily distracted
