| This Summary is Still In Progress This summary is still a work in progress, and is actively being worked on. Documenting the persona creation process is still in progress. We'll continue to flesh this out and add details as time permits. |
Creating Personas
Give the persona a name
- Add a picture
Avoid a real person
- Creating an archetype
Be precise
- More important than accurate
- Don't oversimplify
- May be a spend a lot of time texting friends and be a wiz at Facebook but gets confused by multiple browser windows or tabs.
- User persona not a buyer or manager (of users) persona
- Must be satisfied
- Will have specific interface, separate and unique.
- Personas are contextual and specific to the particular problem space and application or service.
Goals not Tasks
- Goals and the reasons they perform tasks.
- Good interaction design is objective not subjective.
- Do they achieve their goal
- Tasks change as technology changes.
- Goals tend to remain stable.
- Design system interaction using goals, not tasks:
- Practical Goals (e.g. avoid meetings, be efficient)
- Personal Goals (e.g. not feel stupid, get an adequate amount of work done, have fun)
- Business Goals (e.g. increase student enrollment, get good professors, quality education)
- False Goals (means not ends)
- Save memory
- Save keystrokes
- Speed up data entry
- Be easy to learn
- Use cool technology or features
Begins with Investigation
- Site Visits
- Interviews
- Everyone on project: Sponsors, Managers, Workers, Users
- Job Shadowing
- Contextual Inquiries

- Previous data & research
- Create many initially...narrow them down...
Identifying Personas - Synthesizing the Raw Data
- Who are these people?
- Skills, abilities and interests
- Business goals
- Relevant personal goals
- How do they relate to technology?
- Highly skilled developer who sounds like a dolphin?
- Technophobes who won't even look at a monitor?
- Something in between?
Diagrams and instructions to come....