4W + 2H: Personas
Before starting the development of a product, it is important to know who the users of our product are. Knowing clearly who the users are of the product can help us to develop products that meet user goals. Those users can be represented through personas. In this article, we will talk about Personas.
What and who are personas?
Personas are fictional characters that represent the characteristics and goals of the users of our products. Generally, personas contain characteristics, goals, motivations, and frustrations.
Why are personas important?
Personas can help developers to know who are the users of the product so that the product developed is aligned with user goals. Thus, the product can provide a good user experience.
When to create personas?
Usually, personas are created in the early stages of designing, especially in the Define Phase. The data collected during the Empathize Phase will be used in designing the Persona.
How to Create Persona?
There are 10 stages in making a persona:
- Collect data about target users (Empathize phase)
- Create a hypothesis about user groups (differences between one user and another)
- Discuss the first hypothesis with the project team to find out whether the hypothesis can be accepted or rejected
- Determine how many personas should be made
- Design personas based on user needs and goals
- Define situations that trigger the use of our product
- Ask for opinions or invite the project team to actively participate in building a persona to get acceptance
- Disseminate personas descriptions to the entire project team, especially to those who are not directly involved in designing personas
- Create scenarios in which involve persona
- Revise persona based on new information obtained
How can persona guide the design process?
In my Software Programming Project course, my team and I developed an application called Liwat.id that acts as a user’s assistant while traveling. We build the Hifi based on the personas provided by the client.
The first persona provided is a student named Marselina Putri who wants to travel on a limited budget but still wants to get an optimal travel experience.
Meanwhile, the second persona is a young executive named Ardhito Permoni who wants to travel with limited time due to his work activities.
These two personas help us in designing our application. For example, due to limited budget (Marselina) and time (Ardhito), we decided to create a page where users can create an itinerary based on a specified time and budget.
Also, because both of them have difficulty finding the right destination, we provide a page where users can search for tourist attractions based on certain categories.
We also provide a feature to share itinerary based on the goals of Marselina.
Considering the goals of users who travel for fun, we chose yellow as the main color because it symbolizes happiness.
Another Example
Apart from the Software Programming Project course, I have also used personas to help design a fintech mobile app called domba. Before creating a persona, my team and I collected data on target users through interviews. From the results, we summarize the target user of our application into a persona named Natalie.
Based on Natalie’s frustration, she had a hard time doing a split bill and asks her friends about the bill. Therefore, we provide a bill split feature so that the bill can be shared automatically by the system.
Also, Natalie had difficulty checking the balance of each e-Wallet since she has more than one e-Wallet. Therefore, the home page design includes a summary of the balances of various e-Wallets.
Because the application we are building is a fintech application, we chose purple as the dominant color because purple symbolizes wealth.
