Persona Sketching

August 03, 2005 | 7 Comments

This is something I wrote a few years back, in September 2003 to be exact. I recently had a lengthy discussion with a few folks about the use of personas in design and figured it was worth republishing.

The value of personas in Web design is certainly debatable, but I’ve found them very useful, if for nothing else then using them to help pull your clients and stakeholders into a discussion about the people what interact with your designs.

As well, they can be use for many other things aside from informing Web design and can be a great way to pull business and user goals together. So, to the post.

What is a Persona?

User goals are important to the success of any Web endeavor, large or small, and it’s too often that the users of a Web site get left out of the process. Buy using a simple technique I call “persona sketching” you can get to know the needs of your users while at the same time easily test your site against user goals.

A persona is an simple document that describes, in varying amounts of detail, a typical user or group of users. In essence “giving a face” or personality to those users. On a large, high volume site you could have many personas, each representing a subset of your user base. A good persona is always based on user research and data and will give you a manageable icon to work with when advocating for your user group(s).

For those of you who are visual in nature, or just like examples, here is an example of a persona I’ve used (.gif).

It may sound complicated, and in truth it can be, but for the purposes of this article and my persona sketching technique, we are going to simplify it quite a bit and give you some real world examples and pointers on how to easily integrate personas into any Web project.

A persona sketch, in essence, is a persona that is based on rough, incomplete or assumed data and best guesses. I want to emphasize that it is always better to have real user data to work with.

Begin with research

You’ll want to begin this process before you begin design and development of your site, a good time is somewhere after you’ve talked with the stakeholders and gathered those initial requirements for the project, but before you begin finalizing goals.

The usual practice of persona creation can be highly involved. When you are working on a smaller site, or on a tight budget, you might not have the time or money to do traditional user research to gather data for you personas. It’s very possible you might not have access to any users at all.

For that reason, when persona sketching you might need to make ample use of your imagination. Do try and gather as much real data about your users as you can. This can be done in various ways, the best of which is having actual contact with as many real or potential users as possible.

Here is a list of alternate ways to gather data for your persona sketch(es):

• Interview your stakeholders and/or clients. They will almost always have had contact with the users in some form and should be able to give you an idea of what they’re all about.
• Analyze the competition. If you can, get to know any competitors Web sites, try and find out what sort of face they put to their users. This can be a stretch, but might uncover some very useful information.
• Talk to friends, coworkers and family. If anyone you know might be a potential user of the site, you can use them as a basis for your persona sketch.
• Role play. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential user and use your imagination.

The idea here is to try and gather as much real data as possible and then fill in the blanks. What you want is to have an idea of what one or two typical users might be like and how they might interact with your site. This could be rather easy or very difficult depending on the kind of site you are working on and the goals laid out for that site.

Use your stakeholders as much as possible. Persona sketching is a great exercise to do with your clients, for lots of reasons. They will almost always have a wealth of knowledge about your users that you often might not have access to. Through persona sketching you’ll be able to tap that knowledge and put it to good use.

Start your sketch

Give your developing persona a name, a face and a history. Again, if you can base this in reality, do so, just make sure and respect the privacy of your users and those you’ve gathered data from. It’s ok if this is a bit rough, after all, we’re just sketching a persona here, not going through a full blown user research process.

With a persona sketch you are going to want to keep it as relevant as possible. Without the benefit of some very well done user research you won’t be able to really know what your users want and need, but trying to give them a face is a small step in the right direction.

Refine your persona

Share your rough sketch with your client or stakeholders, often they will have valuable insights into the “personality” of your persona sketch that can help you iron out the details. As an added bonus, they’ll probably think it’s really cool.

Fill in any blanks you feel are missing, breath some life into your persona sketch and add a photo to personalize if you want. Feel free to get a bit creative if time allows, but make sure to keep the goals of the site in mind at all times.

Finishing up

Once you have a sketch nailed down, begin to test your goals against it. Think about how this persona uses Web sites, what they think of your client’s business or your stakeholders agendas. What do they like, and what don’t they like? Think about proposed features. For example, your client wants an interactive Flash driven menu. Does your persona hate slow loading pages? Are they using a dial-up modem? Will he or she have problems understanding a complex UI metaphor?

This process can help you fine tune your goals and requirements as well as set you up to help eliminate the scope-creep that almost always bogs Web projects down.

Persona sketches are very useful for discussion that involve changing requirements or adding features. You can almost always refer back to your persona to illustrate user goals.

Final Thoughts

Let’s face it, in the absence of good user research, all you have are assumptions about your users. Through the process of persona sketching you will, at the very least, have more informed assumptions and a tool that can be a constant reminder to keep your users in mind.

There are many more ways in which you can use personas, as well as various other techniques for their creation. To learn more, here are some persona resources:

• Personas: Matching a Design to the Users’ Goals - Christine Perfetti
• Practical Persona Creation - D. Keith Robinson (me)
• Perfecting Your Personas - Kim Goodwin
• Bringing Your Personas to Life in Real Life - Elan Freydenson

Filed under: Usability
Keyword Tags: personas information+architecture user+centered+design

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