Personas

    Personas

      Like most design elements, personas can be developed iteratively. And like most design elements, there are benefits to creating the personas collaboratively. Involving the stakeholders and other team members increases the accuracy of the persona and creates a level of awareness about the users that helps the team align around them. As people become familiar with the personas, they start talking about them as if they were actual people. When that happens, you have achieved a valuable focus.

    How Many Personas?
      Most interactive products have multiple audience segments. This suggests that you should construct multiple personas. However, with too many personas, the process can get out of hand. As a rule of thumb, three or four personas are enough for most projects. If you find that you are creating more than five or six, stop and reconsider.




    Clarifying What to Do and In What Order
      A concrete way to include personas in your process is to have your stakeholders prioritize your personas and use that to create a weighted prioritization of capabilities in your solution, as Prioritizing Features

Capability Elliot Miranda Tom     Overall

View Item           2                 1          2            10

Place Order   0                 2          1              4

Weighting: Elliot – 3 | Miranda – 1 | Tom - 2

Scale: 2 – Must Have | 1 – Like to Have | 0 – Doesn't Need/Care

      Examples for personas:

•      Royal Bank of Scotland – personas for the intranet design

•      Orange "Animal" mobile phone tariffs

               Canary, Racoon, Dolphin and Panther

      Canary - for people who love to chat

      Racoon - for people who want no nonsense basics 

      Dolphin - for people who love to text

      Panther - for people who want all the extras