Personas are fictional people created to aide in the design process. "A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about people who have been observed or researched in some way. A persona is depicted as a specific person but is not a real individual; rather, it is synthesized from observations of many people."
Apparently lots of people don't like using personas or even believe they don't help. I am a self-proclaimed world-class people watcher, so it makes plenty of sense for me to use them as I gather my research.
I was actually sort of skeptical when we were asked to form personas for our studio, but as I shaped these people and their interests and characteristics my focus really narrowed. It helped me define the kind of product I wanted to produce, and gave me a solid footing that I had been lacking before.
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ReplyDeleteAMEN. We don't called it "human-centered design" for nothing. I wonder how many companies actually put Personas to practice. Ubiquitous application of this simple concept would change every business. It's a mechanism for empathy, I think.
ReplyDeletePersonas help to generalize a certain demographic of people to target. I think they are essential for the empathetic side of design, and designing for humans.
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