HUMANIZING USERS: DEVELOPING USER PERSONAS
Over the years, I’ve had folks talk about users and customers, and this is more prominent in this era where startups are buzzing in every nook and cranny of the world. Every time someone uses those words, there’s an inward part of me that always makes me want to ask them a question: where are these users or customers? Are they somewhat superhuman? Where do they live?
PS: Don’t get the questions back to me because as of the time I wrote that paragraph above I was yet to get the answer or anything close to it.
The simple truth is that we all, including you reading this piece, are users, probably customers. Not going deep enough to state a clear dichotomy between users and customers, let's just summarily refer to users as a group of people who are capable of using a product or service and customers as a group of people who are capable of paying for a service or product. So, understanding your business and product model will contribute immensely to determining who your users or customers are.
Now, why do we hurt ourselves by removing the human nature of our users and customers? Why aren’t we showing empathy by seeing and recognizing them as humans rather than seeing them as a piece of mechanical bot that lives somewhere on the outskirts of the world? Probably because most of us are selfish. Remember, the problem your product or business is solving and how you’re solving it starts with understanding the people who have such problems. How can you solve a problem that nobody is facing?
Okay! Let's stop the chase and dish out what I suggest.
One of the ways of understanding your users and giving them back the human nature they possess is through a user persona. Yes! A user persona helps you ascertain several characteristics attributed to your user or group of users. It could go on to show details such as a forename for the user, Say Josh. This attribute does not generally mean that all your users or intended users have them at an equal pace, but average.
According to an IDF article,
“Personas are fictional characters that you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand similarly. Creating personas will help you understand your users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals. Creating personas can help you step outside of yourself. It can help you recognize that different people have different needs and expectations, and it can also help you identify with the user you’re designing for. Personas make the design task at hand less complex; they guide your ideation processes, and they can help you achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for your target user group.”
The purpose of the project or objective of your product or business will help you determine whether you’re up for either:
Market research persona or Design research persona.
Let’s get started with creating user personas by walking through the design thinking methodology.
1. Research background:
Do you have intrinsic knowledge of the product or market niche? The more thorough and deep your research is, the better it will be for understanding the different user segments you might have. Most products have users and customers. Some questions that might come up at this stage are:
What is the product or market selling?
Whom does the product or market serve?
Where do they sell the offering?
How do people engage with the providers?
At what rate is the offering?
Deep insight and research about both parties' behaviors and responses will help understand certain traits that might influence the persona.
Do you have intrinsic knowledge of the product or market niche?
2. The next move is now identifying the likely or intended users.
These are called target audiences. Finding the users could be questioned by:
Who are the users?
How many users are there?
What do they do with the system?
Afterward, analyze the information you’ve gathered, group the users, and give them names. Always make sure your data is verifiable at all times.
3. Finding a working pattern.
Go through the steps we have discussed and the group we generated. Rethink about any other things to consider and if the forces around the user groups stand to drive the product and market objectives.
4. Now's the time to construct the real persona.
A typical persona should have the following.
Body (name, age, picture)
Psyche (Introvert/Extrovert)
Background (Occupation)
Emotions and attitudes (towards technology, the company, and the information)
Personal traits.
While designing the persona, also consider:
Prepare situations or scenarios for your personas. This is directed at creating scenarios that describe solutions. For this purpose, you should describe several specific situations that could trigger the use of the product or service you are designing. In other words, situations are the basis of a scenario. You can give each of your personas life by creating scenarios that feature them in the role of a user. Scenarios usually start by placing the persona in a specific context with a problem they want to or have to solve.
Obtain acceptance from the organization. As many team members as possible should participate in the development of the personas, and it is important to obtain the acceptance and recognition of the participants of the various steps. To achieve this, you can choose between two strategies: You can ask the participants for their opinion, or you can let them participate actively in the process.
5. Lastly, share the persona with the stakeholders involved in the product or market processes.
Simply choose a better way of sharing it with them, and remember, you’ve done great work defending the persona with rationales of why it’s fit for the project in context. It is important to decide early on how you want to disseminate this knowledge to those who have not participated directly in the process, to future new employees, and to possible external partners. The dissemination of knowledge also includes how the project participants will be given access to the underlying data.
Everyone prepares scenarios. Personas have no value in themselves until they become part of a scenario—the story about how the persona uses a future product—and then they have no real value.
Make ongoing adjustments. The last step is the future of the persona descriptions. You should revise the descriptions regularly. New information and new aspects may affect the descriptions.
Should I tell you?
You’re now super ready to improve your user persona skills or prepare one if you've not done so before.
I provided a template you can use to prepare your user persona. Feel free to use it and modify it to suit your project.
PS: My opinions are generated by my practice of UX and research; also excerpts from exercises on interaction design foundation design school. Feel free to air your views too.
