Personas remind us who
the people using our product are
and what pain points they have.
They help avoid building an infinite feature list
for no specific person
where usability
is an afterthought:
Personas help us picture and empathise with the people using our product. Personas provide a clear definition of the person using the product, rather than a nebulous "user". Personas remind the team of the motives, pain points and reasons why people need a particular feature. Keeping these reasons at the forefront of the teams' mind can significantly impact the delivery of the product.
Not convinced the why makes a difference? see: "Know Your Why" (Michael Jr): https://youtu.be/1ytFB8TrkTo
A persona is usually1 a fictional character created to represent the type of person that is using the product in a particular way. The format in which they are written can vary according to the needs of the project. This tutorial will focus on "proto personas". Proto personas are ideal for projects that are short on time / resources but still want the core benefits that using personas offers.
Here's an example of a persona for a site (ClubSoda) that helps people find non / low alcohol drinks options and the venues that serve them. The context of the persona is around her background with alcohol and her balance of drinking:
Anyone can create personas; it's not exclusive to the "Product Manager/Owner" or "UX Designer". In fact if you have any role in a small team, taking the initiative to create personas is a great way of showing leadership. Even solo entrepreneurs building products (Websites/Apps/Games/etc.) can benefit immensely from having personas. They are a way of focussing our attention on the human being whose problem we are solving and not getting distracted building shiny features nobody asked for! As you will see from our template + instructions below, it's incredibly easy to create a persona in less than 5 minutes. There's really no excuse not to do it.
Obviously the best time to create personas is at the start of a project so that it's immediately clear to everyone exactly who your are building it for. The second best time to create personas is right now! It doesn't matter that you've never used them before in your project/team/company. Start today with one persona. Don't use not having "time" or a printer as an excuse to not do it. It only takes 5 minutes and the benefits are instant. Clarity of who you are building "Feature X" for and exactly what problem it solves for them.
A persona should include:
- Name, Category & Photo — names that are an alliteration with the group that they represent are useful e.g. "Sophie, the Student". Accompany this with a photo or illustration of them.
- Age (don't be afraid to be specific)
- Job Title & Organisation/Company (where applicable) if the person is not employed, e.g. "Full Time Dad" or "Keen Gardener", that's fine too. Just try and be specific about their main "activity".
- Background - the persona represents a type of person using the product, think about what core background characteristics or attributes might be typical for this kind of person. You may be able to recognise these types from UX research interviews you've conducted.
- Motivation - Why do they need your product? What problem(s) can your product solve for them? Why would using your product benefit them?
- Pain points - What do they struggle with at the moment in the domain of your product? What problems could you solve for them (even if it's not currently being addressed by the product)? Is there anything that might put them off of using your product?
Once you've created your cards you should print them and display them on the wall near your team.
This means the team has easy access to remind themselves of them. We like to refer to the personas in our standups, while writing stories and during sprint planning. This is a great way of giving specific context for the purpose behind a particular feature.
Personas are also beneficial for introducing new team members or stakeholders to your product and its key audience.
Personas can be tailored to the unique needs and goals of your project according to what you consider relevant. For example you might want to use a quantifiable pain points scale:
Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/02/28/pain-points
Here are some more examples of personas from the project to help people find low or no alcohol drinks and the venues that serve them. These personas are for the drinks brands, venue managers and the staff from the organisation behind the site. They consider their involvement and presence on the site and how it can benefit them. The first two personas are fictional representations of the two types of people using the App, whereas the last persona (Jussi) is a real person who is one of the admins of the App:
These personas and illustrations were created by
Cleo
a multi-talented Developer and scrum master.
If you lack the drawing skills
or just want an easy way to create your own personas,
you're in luck! (keep scrolling!)
Once you have the data (facts, background & pain points) required to create the persona, it will take you less than 5 minutes to create it using our template.
Clone the GitHub repository that has the template you want to edit:
git clone git@github.com:dwyl/process-handbook.git && cd process-handbook/personas
(Optional)
If you want live-reloading while you are editing the template,
run the live-server:
npm i && npm start
That will automatically open the index.html file in your preferred web browser
e.g:
Open the index.html file in your editor
and edit the persona template text.
Once you have edited the data in the persona template, take a screenshot (see take-a-screenshot.org if you don't know how) and upload it to GitHub where you can share it with your team. e.g:
We are using these in our app, see: /dwyl/app/issues/213
You don't need to have a picture for your persona, but it definitely helps to personify them and it doesn't have to take more than a couple of minutes to get or make one.
If you don't already have great drawing skills (or the time/patience to learn), then Bitmoji bitmoji.com is a great (FREE) way to create a personalised avatar.
The best way to use Bitmoji is to download the App
from the Apple App Store or Google Play store
and create the avatar on your phone.
There is also a Chrome extension
if you prefer not to download any apps.
Bare in mind that we are security/privacy conscious
@dwyl and wouldn't recommend any app
that we haven't checked, downloaded and used ourselves.
You can deny all permissions on the App and it still works fine.
It won't have access to any of your personal data,
and you can delete it as soon as you've finished using it.
There is zero marginal cost to the creators of the App.
Note: Yes, bitmoji is owned by Snap Inc. makers of Snapchat the App that sucks the attention of America's teenagers ... 🙄
But you anyone can use Bitmoji to create personalised avatars and thendeletethe App without giving any personal information to Snap. Simply ignore their request to "start by taking a selfie", or "upload a photo of yourself". Just create your emoji based on the desired attributes and then download the resulting "bitmoji" along with any variations you want.
1Personas are usually fictional representations of a typical person using a product. This is to avoid subject of the persona feeling self-conscious. However in the case where you are building a feature for a very specific person (e.g. your "boss" if you're building a specific feature of an internal tool like a sales dashboard) the persona is very clearly a person we know and can describe them precisely to help the team focus. That is the case of this last persona (Jussi) who is a real person we know and love. Having a well defined persona for the real person using the product can be even more useful than a fictional one. We just need to be careful to only use people who have given their consent to be personified.
