Using Personas to inform design
I’ve been doing some research into developing user personas at work this week. Aside from Alan Cooper’s seminal book, The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, there are plenty of great resources to be found around the web – here are some of the most useful I’ve come across:
- First, a simple definition and description of personas
- D Keith Robinson (writing for Evolt) has a good introduction to creating your first personas (here’s another good overview on introducing personas to your organisation)
- Boxes And Arrows have a great introduction-cum-anecdote on how using personas can dramatically shape the development process
- Bringing Your Personas To Life In Real Life (Boxes and Arrows again) is an excellent summary on how to get buy-in from colleagues and present persona information internally
- interactionbydesign.com have an 18-page toolkit you can download, covering how to create and then use your personas (yet another Boxes and arrows article covers some of the tips contained therein)
- A newsletter from Cooper Interaction Design has some useful information on the types of user goal to use in persona design
- I found a nice collection of persona-related links, including some good case studies and sample personas
- The IAWiki lists yet more links, and also includes a useful list of attitudes to include in your persona designs
- Finally, some recommendations on how to figure out which is your primary persona
Of course one should always strive to give a fair and balanced view, so here are a few words of warning on persona use:
- Adaptive Path warns against building your personas from assumptions not research
- and Andrei Herasimchuk’s article The Persona Crutch (here on archive.org) complains that personas discourage the designer from getting inside the user’s head
Hopefully someone may find a few of these useful one day. What about you – are personas regularly utilised in your company, or have you made a conscious decision not to use them? Either way, I’d be interested to hear your experience of personas within web design.
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Comments
- Andy Saxton
- 627 days ago
Agreed. I have been aware of personals for some time, since I read the Kelly Goto book, but to be honest I have never used them.
I might give them a try on the next project I do.- #2
I try to incorporate case studies and personas as I design and develop (time permitting). I think it helps to keep you focussed.
These look like some really useful links, Matt – bookmarked! Let us know how using these goes for you at work.