Using Personas Effectively

Personas have become a popular tool in recent years, and many now consider them an essential tool in the interaction designer’s toolbox. While using personas is straightforward there are many subtleties involved in getting the best results from this method. This tutorial will help both those who are new to personas and those who are already using them get the maximum benefit.

The tutorial will cover the following topics:

What is a Persona?

This will explain the structure of a persona, and the basic concepts behind their use. What advantages Personas have over other methods of describing a products potential audience.

How to create Personas

Delegates will learn how to create Personas from data obtained through user interviews, ethnographic research and other sources such as demographics and marketing information. Knowing which information to use can be difficult. And knowing how far to go in describing a Persona can also be challenging. Guidelines for getting the right level of detail will be discussed. An important part of this is understanding that Personas are a creative tools more than they are analytical ones.

This will also include the best ways to organise design teams to use Personas. Do you get designers to do user research or do you have a team of specialist ethnographers for example?

Delegates will also learn about a central aspect of all good Personas – Goals. How do you determine what are the Personas motivations – what are they ultimately trying to achieve. This is a vital aspect in getting the most from Personas.

Peter will also address some "discount" methods for creating Personas, for projects where more extensive user research is not viable.

Using Personas

Once you have some Personas how do you use them? This will include selection of your Primary Persona, the one which will become your primary design focus, and also help you identify secondary and negative Personas. Also using Personas to construct scenarios which will help both to form and test the emerging design. Scenarios encapsulate both the problem and the solution, add Personas and they also include the users.

By using Personas delegates will learn to avoid two common design pitfalls – elastic users and self-referential design. These common problems are often hard to spot without Personas, but easily addressed with them.

Personas also make a powerful communication tool. Delegates will learn how they can be used to educate clients in thinking in a more user-centric way, and help alleviate problems such as featuritis, as well as communicating designs to development teams in ways which help the developers gain a deeper appreciation of the design solution.

Why do Personas Work? When do they fail?

Finally, delegates will see why Personas work, and how they build on innate human abilities. This will include the important concept of empathic distance – a way of understanding when methods must be rigidly adhered to and when shortcuts can be taken. This will also underline the limits of Personas – when they fail and how they fail.

Practical Sessions

Delegates will take part in two exercises. The first exercise will be creating a cast of Personas from interview data, which will be gathered on the day. From this cast a Primary Persona will be selected to guide the second exercise. That exercise will be to create a conceptual design for an online system. Delegates will work in groups of 3-4 on both exercises.

Questions and Answers

Delegates should feel welcome to bring questions about how to apply Personas within their own organisations.