What is, (and what isn't), a user persona?

Image from Pixel Character Creator

 

 I was holding off on writing about more industry related topics until I felt my writing chops were a little bit more robust, but a certain image has come across my time line enough times to even trigger a small post ahead of schedule.

 

The image in question

 

 

 

I wasn't able to trace the image back to the original post due to the amounts of sharing and reposting it has gone through, but the main problem I've found is not with the image itself. After all, the quote in the red box is quite accurate! Personas are all about the problems and challenges your potential users are facing and can be sprinkled with some additional details on how that problem makes them feel in order to get your product team better acquainted with the people they are creating and developing for.

So what has me so peeved at this image then?

The context and messages with which this image is shared are the real reason for my getting a tad annoyed. Posts claiming that personas are useless, that UX is a bloat on the ideation process to the ever present post using it to claim one certain UX practiotioner or service is better than the alternatives.

While the last use case presented is certainly valid, (although not very effective), the first two are ones that I feel are a definite show of ignorance about what UX exercises entail and what they aim to solve. 

It's akin to me getting a wire frame diagram for a landing page and commenting on how terrible looking this design is as it lacks colors and pictures.

Right then, so what is a user persona?

A user persona is a tool that helps with visualizing the person you are designing for with a very specific focus on what makes that person a a user or potential user of your product.

For reference, the Charles/Ozzy image has a focus on demographics, this is sometimes referred to as a "marketing profile" and is especially useful when taking decisions about branding, (brand colors, voice, iconography), and marketing, (audience, tone, platform of choice for a specific campaign), in general.   

User personas consider the tasks a user wants to perform as the parting point and then elaborates on other factors like pain points, feelings and specific goals, to paint a more complete picture of what a person's needs are and provide a clearer path for product design teams to think of work flows and features that can effectively solve them.

Want to work on your own user personas?

With how popular UX has become and the amount of resources and articles available online, it may initially seem like a monumental task to work on your own personas, especially if you're part of a start-up or a smaller development team.

Luckily, for every existing process there is a lean/guerilla version available!

Keep in mind, performing a thorough investigation and following the complete process for any UX tool is always preferable if you have the time and means to do it. But paraphrasing my favorite UX author Paul Boag, "performing a little investigation is better than performing none at all".

Steps to building your own customer persona:

1. Gather available user knowledge.

Sometimes it's not feasible to launch a widespread user market investigation when there is a significant time or money constraint. If this is the case there are alternative resources to get user insight. Asking customer facing staff or team leaders can provide a good overview of user's pain points and common doubts and problems. If there is a department or area in the company that has a population of people that could be users themselves you can also query them. Eg. If the product is geared towards developers, asking members of the dev team can yield some new perspective to the product designers.

If the team has no customer facing staff, skip to step two.

2. Review the gathered information and create a "springboard" template

Springboard template is not a formal name. I call it that because it's used as a launching point to create an actual usable template.

From the gathered information it's important to identify the questions and pain points that are mostly brought up. Recognizing these factors is key if we want to understand the tasks the user has to perform in order to reach a certain goal as well as the state of mind they may have while using our product. If possible it can also help us understand what influences them to use our product or service.

If there are gaps in the gathered knowledge or you weren't able to get any initial data, use the previous paragraph in order to structure a short interview that may address these key points.

We'll use this interview to conduct step three.

3. Conduct user research to fill out the missing information for our springboard

There are a variety of UX research exercises that can be used in order to gather user data, if it's your first time or your schedule is really tight, I suggest you go for an in-person interview or a quick call since these are the easiest to conduct and can be done over lunch or other non cumbersome time spots.

Since our current focus is on lean UX practices, you need to get five users to poll in order to get a good (lean) sample size.

4. Fill out the following template

With your springboard data template ready, pour the gathered information unto the following image. Feel free to create a different one to match your brand or personal taste, but keep the fields and their content in their place!

Image taken from this article on boagworld.com

 

5. Use and update your persona often

Personas are meant to provide a frame of reference for the whole product team, print them out as posters or keep them as a slide on product updates so every team member can "put themselves in their user's shoes" when making a decision or suggesting new features.

As the product evolves and your customer base grows, remember to keep an ear open to any changes or evolving concerns and keep the user persona, (or personas), updated to always reflect accurately on your users.

 

It really is that simple!

Any measure of UX work you can apply to your products and projects can provide a verifiable improvement in how enjoyable your users find them, and as stated above, there are a lot of available resources on the internet that can be used to get an idea of where to start.

If it still seems too daunting a task, make sure to reach out! I'm sure together we can find a way to make your products overall more enjoyable for current and new users alike!

Until then, let's keep creating!!