A user persona is a representation of the goals and behaviour of a real group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesised from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behaviour patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design.

The use of personas as a technique was popularised by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the Asylum. The book outlines the general characteristics, uses, and best practices for creating personas.

So, how do you actually go about creating a persona or a set of personas for your project? The following is based upon work carried out by Dr. Lene Nielsen in her 2004 thesis and published in HCI Vistas.

Finding the Users

The initial step is to get hold of as much knowledge of the users as possible.

Questions asked:

• Who are the users?
• How many are they?
• What do they do within the system?

Methods used:

• Contextual interviews
• Online surveys
• Observations
• Second-hand information
• Reports (e.g. from marketing)
• Cultural probes

Documents produced:

• Reports

Building an Hypothesis

Working with personas really means focusing on users in a certain context, which originates from the project that is being researched. Often companies have a certain way of talking about their users, or should we say customers, which does not take into account the different context in which the users use a website or a system.

Questions asked:

• What are the differences between the users?

Methods used:

• Looking at the material
• Labelling groups of people

Documents produced:

• A draft description of the target groups

Verifications

The focus here is on finding data that supports the initial patterns and at the same time supports the personas descriptions and the scenario writing.

Questions asked:

• Data for personas — What are the likes/dislikes, needs and values?
• Data for situations — What are the areas of work and work conditions?
• Data for scenarios — What are the work strategies and goals. What are the information strategies and goals?

Methods used:

• Quantitative data collection

Documents produced:

• Reports

Finding Patterns

Questions asked:

• Does the initial labelling hold true?
• Are there other groups to consider?
• Are all equally important?

Methods used:

• Categorisation
• Task analysis

Documents produced:

• Descriptions of categories

Constructing Personas

A crucial step is what to include in a persona’s description and how to avoid creating stereotypes if at all possible. The purpose of a persona is not to describe users as such, but to create solutions that use the needs of the persona as a starting point.

Questions asked:

• What are their basic attributes — name, age, gender?
• What is their psyche — introvert/extrovert?
• What is their background — occupation and interests?
• What are their emotions and attitude towards technology, the company or the information needed?
• What are their personal traits?

Methods used:

• Categorisation

Documents produced:

• Descriptions of categories

Defining Situations

The real purpose of the personas is to create scenarios from the descriptions. Each need or situation is the beginning for a scenario.

Questions asked:

• What is the need of this persona?
• What is the situation?

Methods used:

• Looking for situations and needs in the data

Documents produced:

• Catalogue of needs and situations

Validation and Buy-in

Personas are often viewed as a means for communicating users (read: customers) to developers and stakeholders, but it is as much about a process that ensures a user-centered development.

Questions asked:

• Do you know someone like this?

Methods used:

• People who know (of) the persona read and comment on the persona descriptions

Dissemination of Knowledge

Not only do personas need to be distributed to everybody on the project, but also the data behind the personas and how and for what you are to use the personas. Many projects forget to inform and teach developers and designers on how to use the personas, how to think in scenarios or how to use them in the use-cases.

Questions asked:

• How can we share the personas with the organisation?

Methods used:

• Posters
• Meetings
• Emails
• Events

Creating Scenarios

A scenario is like a story, it has a main character (the persona) a setting (somewhere the action takes place), it has a goal (what the persona wants to achieve), it has actions that lead to the goal (interactions with the system/website/device), and last but not least, it has obstacles that block the way to the goal. Scenarios should be both positive and negative.

Questions asked:

• In a given situation, with a given goal, what happens when the persona uses the technology?

Methods used:

• The narrative scenario, using personas, descriptions and situations to form scenarios

Documents produced:

• Sceanrios
• Use Cases
• Requirement Specifications

On-going Development

Finally, always update information on the personas, afterall you may find some interesting scenarios that weren’t originally considered, or new situations in which the system/website/device is used. Indeed you may discover new personas!

Questions asked:

• Does new information alter the personas?

Methods used:

• Usability tests
• Focus groups
• Surveys (online)