Questions tagged [personas]

A description of a user archetype that aids designers by allowing them to follow the mindset of specific types of users when test users are not available.

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How do you build empathy for users that you don't relate to?

I'm currently working on defining and improving the way my company handles customer feedback and, in particular, feature/improvement requests. One challenge I have is that I don't empathise with our ...
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Why Not Use a Real Person as a Persona?

My understanding of UX Personas is that they're descriptions of fictitious people designed to represent the common traits and attributes of a broader audience demographic. If that's the case, in what ...
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18 votes
3 answers
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example of a good software design document

Anyone got any online examples of good software design documents. I want personas, goals, scenarios and all that good stuff. I wish Cooper would have included a document with his books.
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8 answers
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Constructing personas without user research

I'm in the position where I can not do proper user research for an upcoming project. I do have some information from the customer (their RFI and RFQ) but I don't feel that is really enough. How would ...
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What research methods can I use to create personas?

My experience with personas has been from creating personas with data that already exists usually provided by the marketing team based on their research. How do you go about conducting research to ...
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13 votes
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Differences between Personas and Archetypes?

I am new to UX and just started using personas for validating the UX of an existing project, then I was pointed out the fact that since my 'personas' were created from observing existing users instead ...
Henry's user avatar
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Is creating personas against the principles of User Centered Design? [closed]

I'm just running through an agency proposal and the misuse of personas has reared its ugly head again. I'm finding this is now a frequently reoccurring theme and so I thought I'd raise it as a ...
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12 votes
6 answers
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How would you create and validate personas for something that is not a person

There are a few questions here about personas, and research methods that you might use in order to create them, (some of which I've answered at length). Examples include: What research methods can I ...
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5 answers
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Should we worry about dial up users?

I am looking to design a site which is going to be fairly image heavy and a question came up about what should we do if the users access it through a a dial up or a really low speed internet ...
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Is there a commonly-referenced example of a particularly well-designed persona?

I am looking to write up a review of the use of personas in the UX field and would like to use an example persona for reference/critique, but I'm concerned that whichever one I choose would be simply ...
Samuel Hulick's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
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How to recruit user test participants?

Where do you find participants for user tests and interviews for persona building? Is it OK to recruit them via an existing web site for example? How much do you pay them?
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How do you determine an appropriate number of personas? [duplicate]

I created 4 Personas for an online car reseller based on focus-group and analytics data. The head of sales pointed out that there are more user groups on our website. I know that usually 3 personas ...
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5 answers
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where to source images for personas [closed]

I've always used istockphoto to find images for personas but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find 'real' looking people. I feel that the more real they look the more believable they are. But ...
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10 votes
4 answers
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How do we validate our persona?

When we pursue our goal of ease of use for our users we sometimes use personas to test or guide our designs. And that’s all good – because it gives us a feeling of how a user would interpret the ...
Benny Skogberg's user avatar
10 votes
6 answers
1k views

Product Manager against personas

I'm having a problem conveying the benefits of personas. I'm working on a complex product and am trying to get my team to build/use personas. Thing is, I keep getting rejected on the claim of "What ...
Nir Bentia's user avatar
9 votes
7 answers
664 views

When to use data driven personas and when to make them up?

I'm studying HCI and the focus for persona creation on my course is resolutely that personas should be derived from user research data. I also attended adaptive path's uxintensive last year and the ...
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9 votes
2 answers
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How do you source your persona photographs?

Like many of you I'm sure, I consider the creation of user personas to be a crucial part of the UCD process, particularly when starting a new project. While we all have our own techniques and styles ...
Chris Myhill's user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
670 views

Why create fictive personas if a real person makes a perfect archetype?

Why I provide a lengthy description of my case StackExchange strives to have general questions with general answers, so that these can help the most people, and not just the person asking. So I ...
Mads Skjern's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
430 views

Do you use Personas? [closed]

I wonder how many UX designers user Personas to create design.
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8 votes
5 answers
678 views

Personas in enterprise web application systems

I'm involved in a project that will be replacing a student information system at a post-secondary institution. I would describe the scope of this project as very large, comprising of approximately 200-...
Brett's user avatar
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7 votes
8 answers
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Personas without made up stuff?

I am currently putting together some personas and am creating a template that will be informed by user research. What I'm attempting to do is avoid the classic 'assumptive' persona and avoid adding ...
Stewart Dean's user avatar
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7 votes
6 answers
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Are personas actually useful?

I've read a lot about personas and have created personas as part of my job, but I am wholly unconvinced about their usefulness. My feeling is that they allow too much room for interpretation, ...
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7 votes
2 answers
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What is the difference between Scenario and User Journey?

I have been doing some research in order to understand what is an scenario and what is a user journey. As I understood, after you develop your personas then you can create the scenarios for each one. ...
Orangejuice's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
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Quoting time and effort for UX research

Edit : I've added a little more detail to the main question here. There are many techniques and practices at our disposal to gain an understanding of the target audiences motivations and needs when ...
Adam Fellowes's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
3k views

Why persona is said to be archetype and not stereotype?

I know, I'm going into the theoretical part instead of a simple practical question. But I think it's worth discussing here. Often it is said that Persona is archetype and not stereotype. Can anyone ...
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what question should be asked to make a persona

I am currently designing an interview plan in order to make a persona for our products(an ERP software, already online). So here is the outline of the questions that i want to asked: know your user (...
canhon's user avatar
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4 answers
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How to enforce persona usage in company's design process?

Any idea how to force interaction designers to truly use personas and not just design based on assumptions or "hidden personas"? My company runs into this problem quite often. We conduct user research ...
ih123's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
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Personas: Do you study current users, potential users, or both?

From my understanding of personas, one of the main purposes is to find out how your users behave and what their mental models of the system might be. I had always thought that, like in usability ...
Zelbinian's user avatar
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4 answers
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The Personal in Personas

Personas are a tool that is becoming ever more central to the UX experience. The utility in identifying representative users, their challenges, their needs, their context, etc... is fairly clear to ...
the other one's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

How to group users into personas

I'm freaking out! I've read more articles about personas than I can remember but there is one thing I can't seem to understand. And that is how do you group users into personas? What methods and ...
Tony Bolero's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
154 views

Existing user research for the freelancer?

What do you do when the users in your persona are relatively unavailable to you for testing out elements of a website? Is there existing research out there for the preferences of common user groups, ...
WP Monkey's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is a good UI metaphor for switching roles user plays in the application?

I am building a conference/tradeshow application where a user can assume multiple roles within the application and within a particular conference. For example a user can be an attendee, and have ...
Kliment Mamykin's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
201 views

Should you make your design personas public?

I have used personas a lot in the design of various products, including IBM Sametime and Lotus Notes. I publicly blogged the draft personas and asked for feedback from the users themselves. The users ...
Mary Beth Raven's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
346 views

How do you create real data backed personas for a simple marketing / lead generation website?

An effective website must meet both user and business requirements, right? In the case where a business simply needs to gather qualified leads and the user is simply trying to learn more about the ...
Steven Adams's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
4k views

What is the difference between developing personas and scenarios?

Personas is more about who the user is, while scenarios are more about the situation the person is in. It sounds pretty simple to grasp, but when developing personas and scenarios the difference ...
Victor Tran's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
5k views

When to use roles vs personas?

I am working on an web based application that is accessible by a small group of clients and their employees. I have been reading a lot about the development of personas but I'm not sure that that is ...
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4 votes
4 answers
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Can personas work for enterprise level software with 10+ archetypes?

I am developing a group of personas for a very complex piece of enterprise software. The problem I am having is that there are very distinct types of users, and I can't seem to boil them down to fewer....
Sean-ux's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
4k views

How many people should I interview for creating a valid persona

How many people should you ideally (when time and money isn't a problem) interview before you could see clear patterns to create a valid persona? I've seen answers between 5 to 30. I'm working on a ...
Tony Bolero's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
1k views

Guidelines for identifying "power users"?

Are there any guidelines for determining whether an audience type are "power users" and if their usage warrants more powerful features? For instance, could a user who orders products from a b2b ...
Mark's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
229 views

Could cognitive style be transferred to personas?

According to Wikipedia, Cognitive Style is defined as this: Cognitive style or "thinking style" is a term used in cognitive psychology to describe the way individuals think, perceive and remember ...
Benny Skogberg's user avatar
4 votes
4 answers
1k views

How to create cut-price personas using stakeholder interviews?

I'm involved in a project to build a new app. I would like to create personas but don't have the time or budget to find actual would-be users. Note: I've never created personas before and my agency ...
Calvin Chong's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
379 views

I can't decide target audience

I'm a student doing a final study assignment at a company. I need to analyze their target audience, but that is still unknown to the company. I know who their clients are, but it's (as far as I know) ...
anche's user avatar
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2 answers
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Empathy Map as alternative or addition to (ad hoc) personas?

Would you say an Empathy Map is an alternative approach to (ad hoc) personas or is it kind of an addition when you already have created personas (first the personas, second the empathy maps)? Like ...
nobody's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
483 views

Is creating a user persona for a personal project needed?

Do you need to create a user persona for a personal project that you are going to add on your portfolio? I ask because if you do create a user persona, it will basically be invented and assuming since ...
ralph's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
223 views

Would you consider Trolls while creating personas?

I have this idea for a website that is suitable for heated discussions and foolhardy opinions, but I want to keep it clean and useful. While discussing the idea with some of my friends we identified ...
edgarator's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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Which qualitative method is best used with Empathy approach?

I have recently been doing a research that involved focus-group, interview, observation and lastly a survey as data gathering and analysis of user behavioral, emotions, experience. I have read and ...
Serag Alzentani's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
423 views

Writing persona narratives - about existing scenario vs envisioned end scenario

Question in short When writing personas, do I: 1. Describe them in their current situation using whatever tool they may be using, or with no tool 2. Describe them using the tool that I am ...
Mads Skjern's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
701 views

Include user requirements in the persona document?

Do you include user requirements in the same document as in individual personas or do you keep them in separate files? In a typical persona document you explain the motivations behind the visit, ...
Tony Bolero's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
865 views

Personas for Users who want to quit an unwanted habit

I'm working on an app that is designed to help people with unwanted habits to addictions. I'm trying to determine how many personas would be appropriate for this app. I don't believe it warrants a ...
bAabel's user avatar
  • 31
3 votes
2 answers
713 views

What is the difference between Proto-personas, Data-driven, Lean Persona and Ad hoc Personas?

So I'm a little confused between these 4 types of personas I've discovered in books and articles. Proto-persona Ad hoc Persona Data-driven Persona Lean Persona What are the differences between them?...
Orange Juice's user avatar