How to make an effective user persona?
Persona is a widely used method in the design community to communicate ‘who we are designing for’ to the stakeholders, team members, and developers. This method has existed since the 1990s, yet it remains an abstract component that has ignited an ongoing debate on how accurately a persona can analyze and convey information. (Nielsen, 2005) The current opinions of designers suggest that persona is effective if it provides context to users’ needs, behaviors, goals, challenges, etc., concerning the product. But if the persona contains unrelated information and hypothetical data, and is done for the sake of the design process, then it renders it useless. (Humble, 2021)
It is important to understand that a persona is not a real person but a synthesis of qualitative and quantitative data collected from user research to model real potential users as much as possible, which will ensure specific user journeys are fulfilled. (Nielsen, 2005) Yet, the biggest criticism the persona method receives is that, despite this, they essentially are made up. (Cronin et al., 2014, 134) In my opinion, I don’t think a persona is fundamentally flawed but rather hard to achieve due to how personas work in practice vs. theory. Many resources on the internet provide boundless generic templates, making it easy to fill in the blanks and create a visually appealing slide that presents fast information. This might sideline data collected through user research since templates aren’t designed to address specific product-related problems. (Rogers, 2019) A persona is a multipurpose and decision-guiding tool that needs to be tailored to each project, not a one-size fit. (Owens, 2017) So, for designers, the key question is: what makes persona a useful tool?
What is a persona?
Persona is an essential human-centered design technique that helps designers empathize and advocate for the users.
Persona isn’t created in isolation; it is synthesized from research and usability testing. Some key insights designers look for are behaviors, demographics associated with the behaviors, expectations, frustrations, tendencies, the influence of surroundings, interaction with the product, and alternate ways users try. (Cronin et al., 2014, 232) Understanding and prioritizing all the data collected during the research phase helps create a mind map to represent the cluster of users with similar patterns and cross-sections of users. The analyzed information in the persona will aid the designers and the stakeholders in making important decisions about the product and its experience.
So, given that persona is a useful tool, we need to explore the question: what does it take to make an effective persona?
Theory versus Practice
In theory, there are many approaches to creating a persona. Some methods use perspectives, goals, scenarios, or models to build a persona. As illustrated in the book, About Face, Cooper’s persona method is a goal-directed perspective with six types of personas: primary, secondary, supplemental, customer, served, and negative. (Cronin et al., 2014, 238) Then there is Jonathan Grudin, John Pruitt, and Tamara Adlin’s role-based perspective emphasizing incorporating qualitative and quantitative data.
The other two types are engaging-perspective and fiction-based perspectives. (Nielsen, 2005) Nielsen Norman Group’s approach to persona is through empirical research, i.e., observation and data, and has three persona types; Lightweight, Qualitative, and Statistical. (Salazar, 2015) Further, some persona methods aim to save time or work with limited data, like Proto-personas, Lean Personas, Ad-hoc Personas, and Provisional Personas. In the book Lean UX, the persona process starts with assumptions, which we research to validate. Sketch proto-personas in quadrants of bio, behavioral, demographic, pain points and needs, and potential solutions. Then, with the ongoing research, we keep iterating our persona accordingly. (Gothelf, 2013, 26) These are a few methods by which we can build a persona; all these methods have an overlapping strategy, but how they communicate the persona in the end changes.
Getting the persona right can be challenging when designers work under time constraints, fast deliverables, changing attributes, and insufficient resources. So when it comes to making a persona, designers must find the right balance between the rigid methodology, user sample size, longitudinal planning, and iteration. Such a balance enhances the validity of insights, heightening the research quality. By contrast, persona fails when they are researched and created for the sake of the deliverables. This might reflect negatively on the design and its team, and the company might even have spent project budget and time and thus might have created risky artifacts that may or may not solve any problem.
A well-done persona communicates “who is the product’s user” realistically. It is also true that not every project requires a persona. It depends on what is best for the product, team, and stakeholders. As long as designers gather insights about user groups, do usability testing, and communicate these findings, they can build a good experience. For example, there are design agencies like AJ&smart that skip user research depending on the problem they’re solving. They first rely on existing research insights, conduct user testing, and work the findings into their design sprint process. (Courtney, 2017) So knowing persona in theory and practicing persona in a fast-paced environment takes balance and flexibility.
Generic Templates
The tangible version of a persona is a few-page document outlining patterns, behaviors, motivations, frustrations, and other traits of a certain user group. But throughout these past 30 years, persona presentation has become more concise. Yet, despite this, designers are making ineffective personas. Part of the reason is if you google ‘persona’, you’ll find generic persona templates and persona generators with identical attributes that turn the persona into shorthand. These generic templates might influence the designer’s thought and design process and create overlapping solutions with different products. While unnecessary data is present on the persona, this might increase, creating random tangents and persona biases, making it dull or problematic. A good-looking persona is a bonus, but it may not evoke empathy. Each persona needs to be tailored, focusing on their key insights, which aid in making impactful design decisions and removes biases without any assumption. So what are these biases we need to be careful of?
Name: For instance, “Busy Bob” for the persona name might suggest the product is for older males even though it could be for anyone. To remove such bias, persona names should strive to remain gender-neutral and timeless and avoid fictional or famous references.
Images: Another bias is reinforcing demographics through stock photos. If Busy Bob wears an overall in his picture, we might think he is a farmer or a carpenter. These inherent biases can alter viewpoints based on traits displayed, including gender, race, culture, and more. Remember, we’re not just representing one person here but a user group. Instead of using one image, we can create photographic collages to convey the emotions and drives of the persona. (Cronin et al., 2014, 133)
Details: Creating a tailored persona might sound tricky, but it’s about synthesizing important details and connections into your narrative. You don’t need to include zodiac signs unless you are designing for a project that has something to do with astrology. It’s not the end for the persona once created. It’s a design decision-making tool, and one of the main goals is to enhance cross-disciplinary collaboration and communication. So don’t let your persona fizzle out; use it to set the stage. (Salazar, 2018)
Personas can do more.
Designing with equity, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) should be a natural extension of our design process and be included in building personas. (Microsoft, 2020) “We use the Persona Spectrum to understand related mismatches and motivations across a spectrum of permanent, temporary, and situational scenarios. It’s a quick tool to help foster empathy and to show how a solution scales to a broader audience.” extracted from Inclusive Microsoft Toolkit. To take one example: many conversational AIs have been modeled on women, like Sophia, Siri, and Alexa. The feminization of a simple conversational AI might reinforce societal bias and gender stereotyping. (Thomas, 2021) We can solve this by bringing equitable, diverse, and inclusive into our design development and making even our persona ED&I friendly.
Take away
I believe the anecdote to an ineffective persona is research rigor, flexibility, and inclusion. Humans assume because it’s the effective way to process what’s happening. (Han, 2010) But as designers, we must try to see far beneath the tip of the iceberg, which will take patience and practice. Persona is an effective way to document an overwhelming amount of research findings and user data in a sophisticated manner to have an overview and reference it throughout the process. Designers must be aware of the biases that might occur and minimize ineffective information as much as possible throughout the design process and not just during the persona-building phase. A well-done persona helps team members and stakeholders empathize with the persona’s values and aid in making impactful design decisions for the end user. Persona is an extremely useful tool, but whether you incorporate the persona in every project, some or none, insights must be based on real data, not assumptions. If we don’t build for people, people will not use it. If you face time or budget constraints, I recommend trying provisional personas instead of skipping the step. It is based on subject matter expertise, existing data, and stakeholders. It will give you sufficient insight and data to start with. (Cronin et al., 2014, 139)
Personas are hard to create, and many templates can make it easy, but a validated persona always represents your users and brings new perspectives into your design.
References
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