Personas

This is another article that offers clarification on the use of personas.

The persona method has developed from being a method for IT system development to being used in many other contexts, including development of products, marketing, planning of communication, and service design. Despite the fact that the method has existed since the late 1990s, there is still no clear definition of what the method encompasses. Common understanding is that the persona is a description of a fictitious person, but whether this description is based on assumptions or data is not clear, and opinions also differ on what the persona description should cover. Furthermore, there is no agreement on the benefits of the method in the design process; the benefits are seen as ranging from increasing the focus on users and their needs, to being an effective communication tool, to having direct design influence, such as leading to better design decisions and defining the product’s feature set (Cooper, 1999; Cooper et al, 2007; Grudin & Pruitt, 2002; Long, 2009; Ma & LeRouge, 2007; Miaskiewicz & Kozar, 2011; Pruitt & Adlin, 2006).

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/personas

From last semester’s UX/UI Design class
Samples of Personas and Scenarios.

Persona and Scenario Sample 03

Understanding Personas

A persona is a fictitious identity used to represent one of the user groups for who you are designing. They are created by taking both qualitative and quantitative data from; analytics, surveys, interviews user testing and other research techniques that the UX designer uses to craft a sketch of an ideal user.
A good persona needs a name, photo, realistic and research based motivations and goals, and a backstory rooted in reality.

Usability.gov—Personas

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

Building data based personas

http://www.sitepoint.com/create-data-backed-personas/

How To Create UX Personas (video)

http://uxmastery.com/create-ux-personas/

An Introduction to user personas—UX Lady

http://www.ux-lady.com/introduction-to-user-personas/

UIACCESS.COM—Example Personas

http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas_eg.html

Free Persona Template

http://fakecrow.com/free-persona-template/

Understanding Scenarios

A scenario is a “day in the life of” one of your personas. It should include both the persona’s daily working tasks as well as how your app or website fits into their lives.

Writing a scenario is as simple as taking your research and extrapolating from it to document the tasks that your persona’s perform when using your product.

A step by step guide to scenario mapping

http://www.uxforthemasses.com/scenario-mapping/

Using Scenarios

https://uxthink.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/using_scenarios/

Usability.gov—Scenarios

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/scenarios.html

UIAccess.com—Example Scenarios

http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/scenarios_eg.html