Personas For Content Development
April 06, 2004 | 
9 Comments
It’s been said that personas have a limited value when it comes to design. I can see the validity in some of those arguments.
I personally see them as very helpful in helping to get some visibility to your users to stakeholders and clients. They can also be excellent discussion tools, but outside of that I’ve realized that their usefulness in the design process is fairly limited.
Although, now that I think about it, I do find the actual creation of personas to be helpful in other ways. It forces you to connect with your readers and users and that is always a good thing. The personas themselves, well, they might be a bit over-rated.
I use a bit of a scaled down technique I call persona sketching and that seems to be a bit more practical than the use of full blown personas.
Where I find them the most useful, personally anyway, is as a writing tool. Last year I created a persona for Asterisk* and I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool in helping me shape my content, my voice and my tone. It’s helping me, in a small way, become a better writer. A persona can also help you:
- visualize your readers
- brainstorm topics to write about (no more writer’s block!?)
- develop a voice your readers will appreciate
- get to know your audience
- you keep your audience in mind when writing
- decide what not to publish
- keep you on track when you begin to get to far off topic
- consciously think about what you are writing and publishing
When I created my Asterisk* persona I was just learning about the use of personas in the design process and I’d had no real clue how I’d end up putting it to use. I found that over time, when looking for a topic to write about I’d often turn to my persona for ideas.
I’ve come to find my reader persona to be an amazing tool in helping me organize my thoughts. It’s almost as if I’ve got one of you here with me all the time; generating ideas, keeping me focused, helping me develop a voice. It’s like my own make-believe Editor in Chief.
Now if I could only get it to check for typos…
I try and keep my readers in mind when I’m writing and when I’m choosing topics to write about. I’m sure most writers do this. Having a copy of my persona around helps me quite a bit. It’s a reference point that helps me question myself.
Personas could be a real help to anyone who writes for the Web. Heck, anyone who writes for an audience. Serious bloggers take note — personas could very well help you out in your writing.
For more on personas and persona creation see the following:
- Practical Persona Creation
- Persona Sketching for Better Web Sites
- Cooper: Newsletters on Personas
- Bringing Your Personas to Life in Real Life
- Taking the “You” out of User: My Experience Using Personas
- Personas: Matching a Design to the Users’ Goals
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. guspim said:
Hi!
You may want to add this link to your list:
http://www.iasummit.org/finalpapers/86/86_Handout_or__final__paper.pdf
Regards,
guspim
Posted on April 6, 2004 11:55 AM | #
2. Justin said:
I’ve never used a bonna-fide persona, but it makes sense in helping keep a consistent message.
Posted on April 6, 2004 04:41 PM | #
3. Bart N. said:
Nice post and very helpfull links, thanks !
Posted on April 6, 2004 05:33 PM | #
4. Nollind Whachell said:
Interesting topic. This is the first time I’ve heard of the terminology “personas”. I think I understand the methodology behind it and its benefits but for some reason the name “personas” sits badly with me. Not sure why. Maybe it’s the same reason why I don’t like the word “consumers” either. I like calling people just that people or users (maybe it spawns from my “Cluetrain” reading). I’m assuming I’ve always said “this type of user is interested in this” in the past and this would relate to a “persona”.
Really, to tell you the truth, I was fortune in not really having to create up fictious people because I had a slew of user examples to choose from. I helped setup, modify, and maintain the message boards for some of the big computer gaming publishers out there and handled their webmaster emails as well. Having read hundreds of posts and emails on a daily basis by thousands of people really gives you a feel for what is going on. In addition, I was an avid gamer myself and I frequently visited community gaming sites (of which I had one as well). Combine these all together and I had a pretty good finger on the pulse of what computer gamers were happy about and what they weren’t happy about. In a nutshell, I listened which a lot of companies didn’t seem to be doing at the time. That knowledge from users allowed me to be proactive and inform the clients about certain issues that were unfolding (but of course if they choose to listen to them is another story).
Posted on April 7, 2004 07:39 AM | #
5. Aaron Schaefer said:
Luckily for me, personas aren’t needed…all of my visitors are ficticious anyway :-)
All kidding aside, I think this is essential for any writer. It never hurts to understand more about your audience, and when you create something to go out in the public realm, it’s definitely something that needs to be considered. Another great write-up Keith!
Posted on April 7, 2004 08:36 AM | #
6. Grant said:
I’ve read about and been apart of user-centererd design classes that spoke about personas, but have never tried to create and use them in a project yet. They seemed a bit silly, but I wanted to try it out to see if they were of any value. Thanks for the additional resources.
Posted on April 7, 2004 04:33 PM | #
7. James Robertson said:
You might also find the following article useful:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/index.html
Posted on April 7, 2004 09:11 PM | #
8. Tony said:
I have found personas to be the most useful when dealing with a large design/development group. By passing out the personas to everyone, and enforcing their use (by the simple question of asking “What would Alice do?”), it generated incredible results. I had the Product Managers, developers, Marketing, everyone associated with the product knowing and using them by the end of the project.
I’ve found personas aren’t as useful when it’s just me. But when it’s a large group, one that I might not be in daily, constant contact with, personas are invaluable.
Posted on April 8, 2004 04:23 AM | #
9. Nat, web designer said:
We have never used personas in our work but it seems to be quite useful even though I’m not sure it is really necessary. I think a professional designer should always know the audiense and be able to decide what not to publish, etc. Do personas really help a lot?
Posted on April 30, 2004 03:21 PM | #
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