Envisioning Users (Persona)

What is a persona?

Personas are a common technique used to communicate findings from user research in a simple and accessible manner. They're very useful as they can communicate this information quickly and (if done well) in a fun way that will stick with the design/development team through the rest of the process, ensuring the user research is taken into account throughout the course of the project.

There should be at least one persona to represent each major segment of your users. The word major is used as ideally you should be using 3-5 personas, and with most sites there are a lot more user groups. Each of the personas should have their own personality and be memorable - put too many in front of people and they start to all blur into one. Any more than 5 personas and people often start to feel overwhelmed.

Example :

And that can be presented as a User Characterizations as below.


Betty is 37 years old,  She has been Warehouse Manager for five years and worked for Simpkins Brothers Engineering for twelve years.  She didn't go to university, but has studied in her evenings for a business diploma.  She has two children aged 15 and 7 and does not like to work late.  She did part of an introductory in-house computer course some years ago, but it was interrupted when she was promoted and could no longer afford to take the time.  Her vision is perfect, but her right-hand movement is slightly restricted following an car accident three years ago.  She is enthusiastic about her work and is happy to delegate responsibility and take suggestions from her staff.  However, she does feel threatened by the introduction of yet another new computer system (the third in her time at SBE)

Real Industrial Examples 


Orange "Animal" Mobile Phone Tariffs

Canary, Racoon, Dolphin and Panther
Canary    - for people who love to chat
Raccoon  - for people who want no nonsense basics
Dolphin   - for people who love to text
Panther   - for people who want all the extras

What information should be in personas?

Personas take a variety of shapes and sizes. The information they contain will be entirely dependent on the user research on which the personas are based, what information is needed by the design/development team and how the personas will be used.

1. Most personas contain a description, picture and some summary of their needs/goals.
2. Pictures are particularly useful as they help people to visualise the persona, to make it seem real. They also help designers/developers empathise with the personas more easily.
3. A description gives a brief summary of the persona, which often contains demographic information (sometimes going into surprisingly large amounts of detail). The description might include (among other information) their job, their technology, any pressures they're under and the situation they're in when they use the system/site.
4. Needs, goals & features can either be a straight list for each persona, or a table comparing each persona against each possible need/feature/goal. This can help define a priority list for features (or the needs from which to develop features) before development starts.