User Personas Design is a very important part of the User Experience Design process. It is a representation of an individual user with whom your product development team will be interacting during the design and implementation phase. In this post, we will try to understand the concept & importance of User Personas
What Are Personas?
User Personas are typically fictional characters that you create based on the research & data you carry out so that you can understand your user’s needs, experiences, behaviours, goals as well as the environment in which they operate.
Each persona represents a different type of user, as it is very important to have a clear understanding of your users and identify the user base you’re designing for.
Elements of User Persona
Personas can be developed by making observations on actual users, but they should never be created based on preconceived notions about your users. You must first clearly describe both the needs and the users since you must match their needs to the functionality of your design.
The purpose of user personas is to focus on the primary demands of the most significant user groups rather than to represent all audiences or fulfill all website needs.
“Be relevant and serious”
- Persona name
- Photo
- Demographics (gender, age, location, marital status, family)
- Goals and needs
- Frustrations (or “pain points”)
- Behaviours
- Bits of personality (e.g. a quote or slogan that captures the personality)
Benefits of User Persona
To develop a successful product, it’s important to understand who will be using the product. In order to solve a real user problem, you need to have a clear problem statement in mind; in order to write this problem statement, you first need to understand your users and their needs.
1: A persona is a way to model, summarise, and have a clear understanding of your users, & the type of tasks they perform on a day-to-day basis.
2: User personas are extremely useful to grow and improve a business: they help uncover the different ways people search for, buy, and use products, so you can focus your efforts on improving the experience for real people and use cases.
3: It helps designers create interfaces that are easy to navigate and less complex user experience that meets their needs and expectations.
4: Empathy is a core value if designers want to make something that is good for the people who are going to use it.
Personas help designers to create understanding and build empathy with the end-users.
Final Words
Kudos, You’ve made it to the finish! In this article, we discussed what a persona is, how to develop one, and some benefits. I hope this information is sufficient to get you started using personas correctly. Personas can be used in the design process to not only make it more efficient but also much more user-centric. However, doing so requires research and practice.