HOW TO USE PERSONAS?
In order to answer this question and make it easier for you to conduct this workshop, we have prepared a kit for you to download, as well as a chronology of the steps to follow.
Method initiated in 1999 by Alan cooper, personas are a fundamental phase of your user-centered design process. They will accompany you throughout the progress of your project.
Finally, don't forget that personas generally precede Experience maps, Brainstorming and Co-design (6-to-1).
THE PERSONA IS AN ARCHETYPE
Personas are user archetypes. They have a history, an age, a profession and missions. Each persona represents a group of users and all of the personas represent all of your targets.
SEVERAL CATEGORIES OF PERSONAS
There are three categories of personas: primary, secondary, and ante-personas. We will not discuss this last group in this article, because they are complex and use very marginally. Let's focus on the essentials...
#1 PRIMARY PERSONA
It is for him that the site is designed. He expects to be completely satisfied with the proposed interface. It is usually unique. In some cases, it is possible to have 3. Beyond that, it can become difficult to refine your ergonomic choices when designing interfaces.
#2 SECONDARY PEOPLE
They are satisfied with the interface although it does not correspond exactly to their expectations. Most of the needs of secondary personas are already taken into account when analyzing primary personas. A few minor additions to the interface will satisfy all of their needs.
Be careful, these are not stereotypes and they are complementary to marketing segments.
EMPATHY FOR THE USER
The primary purpose of personas is to enable the product team to look through the eyes of end users during product design, user testing, and development.
STEP BY STEP METHODOLOGY
This workshop can be done alone or with your team.
#1 DATA COLLECTION AND PRIORITIZATION
It is important to organize a workshop, a warm up for example, with stakeholders to gather market information, marketing segmentations and especially target users.
#2 THE CHOICE OF PERSONS
From the information collected, we can begin to briefly describe the behaviors of your future personas.
Thus, you will probably have between 5 and 10 individuals who will appear. You must then eliminate, in consultation with the stakeholders, those whose behaviors are very similar to each other or those that bring you little added value.
#3 BRINGING PERSONAS TO LIFE
In this phase, you must write the novel of their life by naming them, giving them an age, a family situation, a place of residence, a profession, etc.
TIPS : To make their first name easier to remember by all participants, you can choose one related to their mission!
It is essential to humanize them: to do this, they must be illustrated by giving them a photo.
EXAMPLE : Fleur is Creative Director in an advertising agency, she is 37 years old and lives in Limoges with her husband and 2 children. She wants to convert and open her own flower shop, so she is looking for a commercial space where to set up.
GOING FURTHER: JOBS-TO-BE-DONE, AN ALTERNATIVE TO PERSONAS?
How did personas compete with jobs-to-be-done? This result is based on a poor understanding of personas, at the outset. In principle, personas would primarily be demographic representations of users that disregard behavioral factors.
However, these factors are essential to produce good personas for UX Design and Product Strategy. In order to deepen your knowledge and understand a little more precisely the "fight" Personas VS Job-to-be-done, do not hesitate to consult our Persona article: Why continue to do (or not)?
[actionbox color=”default” title=”Template Atelier Personas” description=”” btn_label=”Upload” btn_link=”https://www.ux-republic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TEMPLATE- PERSONAS-UX-REPUBLIC-2018.zip” btn_color=”primary” btn_size=”big” btn_icon=”” btn_external=”0″] Included in this kit: template, photo portraits to cut out and pictograms of your personas' favorite applications !
TAKE AWAY
This workshop aims to make us able to create virtual characters, whose life and needs can be described. Personas sheets should allow you to answer these three questions:
#TARGET Who will use my service?
#GOAL What does he want to do?
#USER JOURNEY How will he do?
Florian Humeniuk, UI-Designer @UX-Republic
[actionbox color=”default” title=”” description=”UX-REPUBLIC Digital Training Center is an approved training center. Our training courses in UX-Design, Agile and Javascript are based on the feedback and know-how of our consultants.” btn_label=”Our trainings” btn_link=”http://training.ux-republic.com” btn_color=”primary” btn_size=”big” btn_icon=”star” btn_external=”1″]
