Personas help a team connect with and better understand the end user of their product. This is key to the success of the product for ensuring that it is built to address the user's needs as opposed to fulfilling the subjective vision of the creators or the convenience of the team building it. They help to focus a build by providing a precise definition of a user, as opposed to a nebulous "person on the site/app". Personas remind the team of the motives and reasons why users want it to offer the functionality that is being built. Keeping these reasons at the forefront of the teams mind can have significant impacts on the delivery of the end product. Not convinced how the why makes a difference, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfzpNVDzre0
A persona is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a product in a similar way. The format in which they are written can vary according to the needs of the project, this readme will focus on "proto personas". Proto personas are ideal for projects that are short of time / allocated resources but that want to get the core benefits that using personas has to offer.
Here's an example of a persona for a site (CS) that helps people find non / low alcohol drinks options and the venues that serve them. So the context of the persona is around her background with alcohol and her balance of drinking:
A persona should include:
- Name, Category & Photo — names that are an alliteration with the group that they represent are useful e.g. "Sophie, the Student". Accompany this with a photo or illustration of them.
- Age
- Job Title / Company
- Background - given that personas represent a user type, think about what core background characteristics or attributes might be typical for this kind of persona. You may be able to recognise these user types from user research interviews you've conducted.
- Why do they need your product? — What problems can your product solve for them? Why would using your product benefit them?
- Pain points - What is it that they struggle with at the moment in the domain of your product? What problems could you solve for them (even if it's not currently being addressed by the product)? What might put them off of using your product?
Once you've created your cards you should print them and display them on the wall near your team. This means the team has easy access to remind themselves of them. You should refer to your user personas when writing user stories to give specific context for the purpose behind writing them.
The personas are also beneficial for introducing new team members or stakeholders with your end user groups.
Personas can be tailored to the unique needs and goals of your project according to what you see relevant. For example you might want to use a quantifiable pain points scale:
via: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/02/28/pain-points
Here are some more examples of personas from the project to help people find low or no alcohol drinks and the venues that serve them. These personas are for the drinks brands, venues and the staff from the organisation behind the site. They consider their involvement and presence on the site and how it can benefit them:
