BunnyfootBunnyfootBunnyfootBunnyfoot
  • Our services
  • About us
  • UX training
  • Our clients
  • Blog
  • Contact us
    Home Tools and Resources Your guide to UX personas and how to use them

    Your guide to UX personas and how to use them

    By Adam Dimmick | Tools and Resources | 2 comments | 8 June, 2011 | 0

    Personas. You’ve probably heard of them and maybe you understand them, or maybe you don’t. That’s OK – these little chaps seem to receive a lot of attention and yet we are frequently asked by our clients what they actually are.

    They are a key part of ensuring you stick to your user centred design principles. This post will hopefully give you a bit of an overview of what a persona is and isn’t, how we’ve used them and why you should too. There are also some suggestions for further reading at the end if you’d like to get your teeth sunk a little deeper into this topic.

    What are personas?

    To the main point then and probably the question you’d most like answering: what are personas?

    In essence, personas are simply short profiles of archetypal users. They will have a name, age, gender, probably a bit of a family or home context and, most importantly a set of motivations and goals for using whatever service is being designed for their use.

    Take a moment to think of your Facebook profile.

    That has a name, a picture and maybe a bit of a background on where you work and what you do. Most importantly, it also includes your status and wall posts which are likely to betray your expectations, frustrations, hopes, motivations and apprehensions about your daily life.

    A persona is basically a bit like a Facebook profile for a representative, typical user, where all the status updates relate to the context within which the new website, service or product, is going to be used (e.g. their job, their home, their plans to book a holiday, etc).

    What are they not?

    Ah, now we get to the interesting stuff. We’ve come across lots of myths and misunderstandings about personas over the years – all of them reasonable assumptions but sadly missing the point (and thus the value) of personas.

    The most important thing to state when discussing what personas are not is that personas are not made up.

    For a persona to have any value in influencing and guiding the design process it is imperative that they are based on data collected about real users.

    This data can come from a number of sources –  interviews and observation sessions with existing and potential users or even carefully crafted surveys, user testing sessions and also the experience that project stakeholders have had with customers.

    These experiences of real users are collected and collated with the intention of finding patterns of behaviour and/or motivation that can start to describe different “types” of user. Each type of user then goes on to form a persona – an entity with a name, age, context and the behaviours and motivations that define that particular user type.


    Another common misconception that needs addressing is that personas are not market segments with a name and photo.

    Market segmentation is a valuable tool within the marketing profession for categorising a market by demographic and forecasting likelihood to buy and, therefore, the commercial viability of a proposed product or service.

    Personas, on the other hand, help inform what it is that this proposed product or service should actually do, based on the recognised needs of the user.

    Let’s try and put this within a real-world context: Imagine a high street store has conducted some research and discovered 30 million people in the UK might like a new mobile app to help them with food shopping.

    You are no doubt encouraged that your idea is so popular however without knowing the context within which your potential users go about buying their food, how they struggle to buy fresh food and what problems they need a mobile app to solve. There is little to inform the design of this service to ensure that it is relevant to the users’ needs and, therefore, stands a chance of being adopted by those millions of eager beavers.

    What are personas used for?

    In essence, personas are used as a key focus in user centred design. But, in reality, they can go a lot deeper than that.

    Involving key project stakeholders in the development of personas can have a hugely positive impact on the involvement of those stakeholders within the project. Helping to write the personas gives them an opportunity to share their experience and expertise and become engaged in the design process in a way that they can easily relate to. This is particularly beneficial when the project in question is internal to an organisation – for example the development of a company intranet – as engaging users throughout the design process can aid adoption of the new system by producing advocates for it within the target user group.

    However, perhaps the most frequent use for personas is to help guide the design of a product, service or solution, keeping the needs of the target users at the forefront, and not the ideas of the designers and developers.

    Having design teams refer to the needs, motivations, behaviours and constraints of agreed personas help ensure that content, interfaces and the like are designed to satisfy those users’ requirements. Moreover, referring to these personas can help overcome disputes within design teams or between stakeholders over particular design decisions. Rather than the dispute being focussed on the wants and the needs of the stakeholders, the design decision can be assessed against the needs of the persona – would making this decision be of benefit or detriment to “Thom”? If it makes Thom’s life better, keep it in. If it’s going to make Thom’s life harder it gets dropped.

    What if we have more than one type of user?

    When there are more than one types of user identified multiple personas can be created. Depending on what is suitable for the solution being designed (and on available resources), you might find that it is appropriate to build several interfaces or pieces of content, etc, to address the different needs of each persona.

    Ideally, however, a primary persona would be selected – whose wants and needs are shared by most or all personas and are therefore always satisfied first. Just because Thom prefers fresh food, doesn’t mean you can’t have a dried food section to meet Sally’s needs, but the fresh food emphasis will be stronger.

    Why you should use personas

    Personas are fantastic tools to be used in the user centred design of any product, solution or service. They help to create cohesion within and between teams of designers and stakeholders and they help to keep the focus of design on the needs of real users which, in turn, helps to ensure that the product you design is relevant and has the best chance of success.

    The key to successful personas really comes down to two things – for personas to be successful:

    1. They need to be realistic – based on real data from real users, gathered through real encounters such as interviews and observations.
    2. Everyone in the project team – from designers, users, managers – needs to buy in to them. Having their involvement in the creation of the persona from the beginning will really help with this and can go a long way to raising the credibility of the personas and its value as a reference point for making difficult business and design decisions.

    Want to know more?

    If you’d like to know more about personas (and believe me, there is plenty more to be learned!) then why not get in touch with us – drop us an email (more@bunnyfoot.com), a tweet (@bunnyfootsays), whatever suits you.

    • Training course: Customer/user research methods and practice
    • Training course: Certified Practitioner in User Experience
    Customer Research, Training, Usability, User-Centred Design, UX

    Adam Dimmick

    More posts by Adam Dimmick

    Related Posts

    • Recruit a diverse audience with remote research

      Mar 27, 2020

      During this unsettling time where many teams are having to re-think their approach to research projects, we have received a host of enquiries about access to participants for remote research. With most people in the UK staying at home now,... Read more

    • Remote UX research and remote user testing at Bunnyfoot

      Mar 25, 2020

      Mostly business as usual with remote working For the last 3 weeks we have been working closely with all our clients to ensure we can continue to keep projects and programmes on track during these challenging times – generally this... Read more

    • Download our guide on how to brief a UX agency

      May 17, 2017

      Request our free template which will guide you through the process of determining which UX services you need – and which UX agency is best placed to provide them. (more…)... Read more

    • Usability test note taking, how to do it and what to write?

      Dec 14, 2016

      We at Bunnyfoot complete a lot of user tests on a day to day basis, many of us having years, and some, even centuries of experience in moderating user testing sessions. With each of us adopting our own unique ways... Read more

    2 comments

    • rocsReply June 13, 2017 at 1:25 pm

      Any practical description on HOW to actually use personas for software development?

    Leave a Comment

    Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published.

    NextPrevious

    Recent Posts

    • ‘AR’-commerce – a novel and functional shopping experience January 26, 2021
    • Webinar: UX & Sustainable Service Design January 12, 2021
    • AR isn’t mainstream… or is it? January 7, 2021
    • What makes an effective UX Consultant? Bunnyfoot speaks to UX Usability Podcast December 11, 2020
    • What’s in a name? User Experience and UX Design vs. Design Thinking November 24, 2020

    Categories

    • Brain Bites: 2 Minute Insights
    • Brain Feasts: Longer Reads
    • Brain Licks: 10 Second Wisdom
    • Bunnyfoot Updates
    • Content: White Papers, Research Reports and More
    • Events
    • News and Announcements
    • Talks and Presentations
    • Tools and Resources
    • Uncategorised

    LONDON

    4th Floor
    54 St John’s Square
    Farringdon
    London
    EC1V 4JL

    Tel: 0207 608 1670

    SHEFFIELD

    The Old Chapel
    8 Mortimer Street
    Sheffield
    South Yorkshire
    S1 4SF

    Tel: 0114 478 2950

    OXFORD

    Boston House
    134 Downsview Rd
    Wantage
    Oxfordshire
    OX12 9FF

    Tel: 01235 606 140

    Cyber Essentials (PLUS) Logo
    • Copyright Statement
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Training Course Terms & Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Jobs
    © Bunnyfoot Ltd 2020 | Bunnyfoot is part of the Sideshow Group
    • Our services
    • About us
    • UX training
    • Our clients
    • Blog
    • Contact us
    Bunnyfoot
    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
    Privacy PolicyREJECTACCEPT
    Privacy & Cookies Policy

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled

    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

    Non-necessary

    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.