10.23
This is a series of posts describing how you create personas, how you use them and how they help you achieve your goals. In this post I’ll give you a brief introduction on what personas actually are, what they’re made up of and why you should make them.
Personas represent your core user group
Typically, personas are a handful of people (up to 5-6) who represent your core user group, fictional characters who have needs similar to majority of people visiting your website. By giving them names, profile pictures, background stories and a reason to visit your site, you’ve narrowed down thousands of visitors into a handful of people you can relate to.
Personas represent user needs
For each persona character you create, you add a set of typical user scenarios that represent their needs. With these needs connected to a character, you can retrace their behavior and predict what their page flow would look like on your site. Typically a user has two or three basic needs, described like “XX comes to mysite.com to search for good deals on digital cameras” and “XX has just moved and needs to update the adress in his profile”.
Personas look like real people
Use real life portrait pictures, and give the personas real life names to resemble a typical user. Describe their work situation, family profile, interests, hobbies and other profiling information, adding flesh and blood to your character. This way, you make it easier for yourself to tell the different faces – and names – apart when you have a complete set of personas.
