Introduction to Persona--web Personas

Personas, that is, persona ([pə: ' səunə]), the main discussion here is Web-persona, which refers to the actual characteristics of the site target group, is a comprehensive prototype of the real user. We study the target, behavior and viewpoint of product users, and synthesize these elements into a group of descriptions of typical product users to assist the decision and design of products.

Take a look at the character's example

Personas typically contain personal basic information, family, work, living environment descriptions, specific situations related to product use, user goals or product usage behavior descriptions. A product typically designs 3~6 roles to represent all user groups.

What is a persona?

Personas are not user segmentation

Personas look like our familiar user market segments. User segmentation is a commonly used method of market research, usually based on demographic characteristics (such as gender, age, occupation, income) and consumer psychology, to analyze the behavior of consumers to buy products. Different from consumer-commodity correspondence, we pay more attention to how users view and use products and how to interact with products, which is a relatively continuous process, and population attribute characteristics are not the main factors that affect user behavior. Personas focus on users ' goals, behaviors, and perspectives, and can better interpret user needs and differences between different user groups.

Personas are not average users

How large a percentage of users can a persona represent? First of all, in each product decision problem, the "proportion" of the precondition is not the same. Is "friends number greater than 20 users"? "Users who never click on ads"? Different specific problems require different data support. Personas are not "average users" or "user averages", and we focus on "typical users" or "User models". The purpose of creating personas is not to get a set of qualitative data that accurately represents the proportion of users, but to help us identify and focus on the target user base by focusing on and studying the user's goals and behavior patterns.

Personas are not real users

Personas do not actually exist. It is impossible to describe exactly what each user is and what they like, because preferences are very susceptible to various factors, and even a different description of the problem leads to different answers. If we ask the user, "Do you like faster horses?" "The user of course replied like, although give Ta a car is a better solution." Therefore, we need to focus on, in fact, a group of users what they need, what they want to do, by describing their goals and behavior characteristics, to help us analyze requirements, design products.

Prerequisites for creating Personas

Personas can be created, accepted and put into use by design teams and customers, and a very important prerequisite is that we agree with the user-centric design concept. When personas are created, can really play a role, but also to see the entire business unit/design team/company has formed a UCD of ideas and processes, whether willing, consciously and unconsciously to introduce personas into all aspects of product design, otherwise, the character is always a device, is a pile of dust-laden documents, Draw on the paper and hang on the wall.

So before creating personas, we need to identify a few questions: who uses these personas? What are their attitudes? How will it be used? What kind of decisions do you make? What are the costs to be invested? Defining these issues is critical to the creation and use of personas.

The purpose of creating personas is to minimize subjective guesswork, to understand what users really need, and to know how to better serve different types of users.

The benefits of using personas

1. Bring attention
The first creed of personas is "it is impossible to create a website for everyone". Successful business models are usually targeted only at specific groups. A team again how strong, resources are limited, to ensure good steel used in the blade ~

2. Resonate
Empathy is one of the secrets of product design.

3. Promoting unity of opinion
Help the team establish appropriate expectations and goals, together to create an accurate shared version. Personas help everyone to think in one place, to make one place, to replace meaningless pk~ with understanding.

4. Creating efficiency
Let everyone prioritize questions about target users and features. Make sure you're right from the start, because there's nothing more wasteful and less demoralizing than a product without demand.

5. Bringing Better Decisions
Unlike the traditional market segmentation, personas focus on the user's goals, behaviors and perspectives.

When can I use a character?

• When developing product strategy
• When discussing product requirements
• When sorting project priorities
• When conducting mission analysis
• While pondering the interactive process
• When choosing a design style
• When recruiting users with research projects
• When targeting promotional targets
• When perfecting the operation plan
............

In short, in a variety of discussions, brain violence, PK, when we want to blurted out "User xxx", personas can be useful.

According to the types of research and analysis methods to differentiate, the characters can be divided into: qualitative characters, quantitative testing of qualitative characters, quantitative personas. The steps, advantages and disadvantages and applicability of the three are as follows:

Alen Cooper's "seven-step Persona Act":

Lene Nielsen's "Ten-Step Personas Act":

Personas clearly reveal user goals, help us grasp key needs, key tasks, key processes, see what products must do, and know what products should not do. Personas are not precise metrics, but they are more important as a visual communication tool for decision-making, design, and communication.

A full and realistic persona is more useful than the right persona. The so-called correct 100% of the actual role is not there, we should be as rich as possible, visualize our target user base, so that it plays a role in the design decision-making process.

How to keep personas alive? This issue must not be overlooked, especially when the team creates and uses personas for the first time. Personas are created not just for a project, but for a particular need. Continuous use and update, the core user's image into each member development, design thinking, is the role of the Mission. We need to constantly refine, demonstrate, interpret, and use it:

References

[1] win in the User: Web personas creation and application Practice Guide. Steve mulder,zivv Yarr, Fan Xiaoyan translation. 2007
[2] About Face 3:the Essentials of the consortium design. Alan cooper,robert Reimann,and Dave Cronin. 2007
[3] Engaging Personas and narrative scenarios. Lene Nielsen. 2004
[4] The Persona lifecycle. John Pruitt,tamara Adlin. 2006
[5] Perfecting Your Personas. Kim Goodwin. 2001

Source: http://uedc.163.com/1076.html