Personas are an attempt to keep it real:
Personas are fictional characters designed to help you empathise with people, usually customers or clients. They do this by forcing you to imagine the life, emotions, motivations, strengths, weaknesses and habits of the people you want to reach. Aiming to reach everybody is dumb.
They’re a tool for anybody who’s in the business of service, information or learning - In the broadest senses of the words. This means Information Architects but it also includes receptionists. It’s most everybody who has a job in the 21st century.
The general advice about personas is that you:
- Base them on real people
- Make them as ‘lifelike’ as possible (including giving them names)
- Stick them on the walls and talk to them when you’re designing stuff
- Take the three suggestions above literally
Here are some guides on how to ‘do’ personas:
Data Driven Design Research Personas View more documents from Todd ZakiWarfel.An introduction to personas and how to create them from Step Two Designs
Developing Personas from usability.gov
The Origin of Personas by Alan Cooper (who is the ‘daddy’ when it comes to personas)
Crappy Personas vs Robust Personas by Jared Spool
Using Personas to Create User Documentation from Cooper Consulting
Personas and the role of Design Documentation from boxes and arrows
Personas are not a document by Jared Spool
A little thing about personas from Adaptive Path
“We don’t use personas. We use ourselves” from 37signals
Perfecting your personas from Cooper Consulting
Examples of persona design:
Persona Patterns from eightshapes
Persona Pattern from eightshapes
Design Ethnography from Semantic Foundry
Persona Pattern (visit site for larger version)
Real or imaginary: the effectiveness of using personas in product design from frontend.com
Example Persona from frontend.com
This last one’s not really about personas, but about empathy mapping. It’s from Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE, and I love it.
Empathy Mapping from Dave Gray
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