Business/Persona
Introduction
A persona is definitions of fake consumer of a product or service. In User Experience and Graphical design they are the idea of made up people that would consume or be affected by a product.
Development
When developing personas a group or team will establish a set of names, careers, hobbies, locals that are well documented. The names become usable to communicate that a given persona may react to influence in a certain way. The relation to fictional acting and psychological research is close. It is important to develop the full persona with details. Any set of details are not meant to discriminate.
Examples
It is very important to develop a full persona that when discussed all team members can identify. Well documented they can be linked to in user stories or issue tickets.
- Name
- A real speak-able name
- Gender Identity
- Develop the full persona with details.
- Age
- Develop the full persona with details.
- Locale
- Rural, Urban, etc...
- Career
- Careers that may or may not intersect with the product/service
- Hobbies
- Develop the full persona with details
- Traits
- Outgoing or withheld etc...
Discussing the situation across a room or email should be easy by mentioning the first name.
Example James
- Name
- James Wood
- Gender Identity
- Male
- Age
- 47
- Locale
- Denver, CO, USA: Lives in the sprawl, 20 min drive to work
- Career
- IT Technician: Years of tech work but no management skills
- Hobbies
- Paintball
- Traits
- Social, outgoing, assertive
Example Susan
- Name
- Susan Parker
- Gender Identity
- Female
- Age
- 29
- Locale
- Chicago, IL, USA: Apartment, 10 min walk to work
- Career
- Help-desk: Establishing herself in the tech industry
- Hobbies
- Art, Drawing: Creating comics
- Traits
- Very observant, quiet, alone
Usage
- Rick wants to use our API for testing his custom software.
- Susan wants to integrate an existing application with our service.
- Tim is running security scans and found something on the API he wants to discuss
- Carl realized after signing up that the service is not what he thought
- Jen is unhappy about a change in the API that broke their existing workflow
- Make note to include positive, negative, and user confusion.
- Imagine what support tickets could be created by a product by each persona.
- Imagine what each persona might look for in marketing materials.