What Are Personas and How To Create Them
You’ve certainly heard the term “User Persona” before, especially if you have experience in UX design. Personas are a tool you certainly need to create a more user-centered product.
In this article, what is persona, Why do you need them, and how to create them.
What is persona?
A persona is a fictional character that represents the target user. Personas are commonly created for websites, applications, or products to help understand the audience they are targeting. Personas are mostly created from interview with the target audience. With this information, companies can create a fictional group of users that most accurately reflects their target audience. Here’s an example of a persona for my group project mobile app:
What is inside a persona?
The basics of persona should contain:
- User information: Such as name, photo, age, gender, description of what they do, and a personal background. Although name and photo aren’t relevant, they add memorability to the persona.
- Their motivations: What users want from the product.
- Their goals: What users are trying to achieve, so you can understand what the user wants. Gives context for how they use the product.
- Their frustrations: What makes users stop using your product.
Why do you need persona?
We can benefit from creating a persona in a number of ways.
- Persona help uncover how people use the product, so you can focus on improving the experience of the real user. As a result, companies and development team better able to meet their needs because they understand the user wants, needs, and problems.
- Knowing your audience will influence the feature and design, thus making the product more useful. Understanding the needs of your user is vital for a successful product.
- Persona helps to create an understanding and build empathy with the user. With personas, designer can gain new perspective similar to the user and consider what the user need.
How to create persona?
- Conduct research
Interviews or surveys are the main method of research for persona. First begin asking who is your target audience. Ask why would they use your product. From there, you can find individual wants, goals, and better understand your user to create a realistic persona. It is essential to collect as much information as possible by interviewing the target audience. A completely fictional persona without any research brings no value to the design and in fact, can bring harm. - Analyze the data
Using the research data you have conducted, condense the data to most closely define your target audience. If you have more than one group of users, you can separate them and create multiple personas. - Define the persona
The last stage of making personas is to define each persona after analysis. Personas should be detailed and include the user background information, motivations, and expectations that you anticipate from the target audience. Using this persona, you can then create a more user-centered designs or products.
Conclusion
Personas are powerful tools that identifies what the user needs. Personas are a way to convert user information to a more condensed and easy to read. Personas can help to create a more user-centered product.
Thank your for reading. I hope this article can help you to create your own personas.
