What is a persona?

A persona is a fictional avatar designed to represent a user who would use a site, brand, or product. Persona is a term commonly used in internet and technology applications and advertising. Personas help assess the aims, desires, and boundaries of consumers. It looks to describe what drives decisions to purchase a service, product, or interact.

You can also use personas to describe a group of people. It’s often employed to create an accurate and realistic representation of a primary audience of a service provider. These representations are usually based on user research which can be qualitative or quantitative. Remember that personas are only as good as the research that created them.

A persona that works will achieve the following: represent a significant user group on a website and express and focus on the essential user groups’ primary requirements and expectations. Additionally, it will give a clear picture of what users expect. It would also assist in the discovery of universal traits and functions.

Persona Development Best Practices

Personas should come first at the onset of a project since they can aid with a project’s functionality, uncovering gaps, and highlighting new opportunities. You can create several personas for a project — it’s preferable to build three or four personas for any project. The purpose of personas is to focus on the critical demands of the essential user groups rather than to represent all audiences or fulfill all project needs. Elements you should consider are background information, the environment of the potential user, demographic data, and psychographics.

How To Compile Accurate Personas

Research

During the research, ask questions like Who are the potential system’s users, and why do they utilize it? What behaviors, assumptions, and expectations do they have that influence their perception of the system?

Analyze the Results

Look for distinct, relevant, and universal themes or characteristics in the system and its users. Next, create persona groups to represent target users by grouping characteristics together. Each group should have a name.

Refine

The rough personas should be combined and prioritized. Sort them into three categories: primary, secondary, and, if necessary, supplemental. Up to 3-5 personas can exist, each with its qualities.

Provide a Justification

Create justifications of each persona’s background, motivations, and accurate expectations.

Advantages of Using a Persona

By adding a layer of real-world consideration to the process, personas help to focus decisions around project components. They also provide a quick and low-cost means of testing and prioritizing such features during the development process.

Persona establishes a direction for development so developers won’t conduct product or service production blindly. It will be targeted at appealing to a particular group of people. And this achieves a twin goal of serving the user excellently while also ensuring project success for the producers.

As much as the audience is at the heart of every design, the business needs to incorporate its needs. A balance between both is reached with a persona, allowing both parties to benefit.