10
votes
Are personas actually useful?
Personas are both good and not good.
A few reasons why they are not good - from personal experience:
They represent research at a point in time and may become less valid as time goes by, and sadly ...
7
votes
How do you determine an appropriate number of personas?
This phrase occurs again and again in UX: "It depends"
It's really dependant on the number of personality facets you need to align to and the depth you want your service to appeal to.
You don't need ...
6
votes
What's the difference between User profiles and Personas?
This is a good question as you will find people have mixed responses about this.
The way I have viewed this and multiple agencies and companies I have worked at also view this is: User profiling is a ...
5
votes
Accepted
Female only persona
What you have now is a clear statistical evidence that shows most of your audience is female, and that you should take special care about that evidence.
Statistical evidence also shows that AT LEAST ...
5
votes
Leaders questioning how many of each persona there are
Your leadership is technically in the right. You cannot have more than one primary persona. It sounds like you have split your personas too readily. If you find that two personas seem to vary only ...
5
votes
How to best group interview subjects into “roles” for persona creation?
Interview / observe them, understand their behavior, then slowly uncover the commonalities. Use those to start uncovering their roles / groupings. Roles become apparent after the analysis of the data, ...
5
votes
Accepted
How do you build personas based on real users
I create user personas mainly using user interviews and contextual inquiries. If available, I will also use data from the analytics software to support my findings during the interviews.
The way I ...
4
votes
Differences between Personas and Archetypes?
I think the distinction is important otherwise we're not leveraging the full potential of each method and how it fits into the overall research and design process. I agree with nearly all the great ...
4
votes
How do you determine an appropriate number of personas?
Just get started
Nothing is constant in the market: Your personas will change over time.
The key is to start putting personas to work in your product now, knowing that you'll have another group to ...
4
votes
Radio buttons on mobile?
Radio buttons may not be 'sexy', but they get the job done with no room for user-interpretation. If you have a choice between 2-3 options, then radio buttons are ideal. They ensure that a user sees ...
4
votes
Personas for Users who want to quit an unwanted habit
In the design thinking process, creating personas is stage 2 of the process. Stage 1 is research. From your question, it appears you don't yet have all the answers you need. Right now you have a quite ...
3
votes
Accepted
Marketing Persona VS UX (Design) Persona
UX personas aren't necessarily extensions of marketing personas. They're used for different purposes, composed of different pieces, and they may even represent different people. In some circumstances ...
3
votes
Can I use 2 different User Journeys for the same Persona to show the flow of 2 different tasks that the user performs?
You user is functioning under two separate personas and each persona has a journey. When they switch persona, the journey switches as well. The challenge is designing the functionality. Ideally, each ...
3
votes
The Personal in Personas
I compare UX professionals to actors. Actors use routines helping them to impersonate their characters. These routines go extensively into the character's background, environment, behavior in ...
3
votes
How to start with personas for internal use
When introducing user research to an internal organization you should be precise at how you will output your research to the team, so that it can be fully understood and thoroughly discussed.
In my ...
3
votes
Is it necessary to have male and female personas?
I'm not sure that I would advocate covering every demographic with personae.
You seem to say that your company wants to expand their female user-base but that isn't a company target.
Firstly, I ...
3
votes
How to best group interview subjects into “roles” for persona creation?
The Interview should be focused around deducting what roles the subjects fit into, rather than predefining it. However, if the is distinction in terms of the roles is important, you could screen the ...
3
votes
What is the difference between Proto-personas, Data-driven, Lean Persona and Ad hoc Personas?
I don't think there is an exact definition, but each of the instances or types you mentioned (keeping in mind that they come from different combinations of sources) relate to some characteristic or ...
3
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between Proto-personas, Data-driven, Lean Persona and Ad hoc Personas?
I agree that all the different names are confusing! The good news is that there are basically only 2 types of persona:
Data-driven
Proto/Ad hoc/Lean
The difference is to do with how the personas are ...
3
votes
How do you uncover true motivations and goals during user research?
I think there's something here to be said for not asking 'why' and trying to understand their true rationale deeper. In a workplace context their entire rationale possible is that, and knowing why won'...
2
votes
Empathy Map as alternative or addition to (ad hoc) personas?
I think that personas, empathy maps and customer journeys are pieces of UX assets that provide related information but in slightly different context (that you use in designing the overall user ...
2
votes
The Personal in Personas
...how does one come to these personal aspects of a persona?
Talk with (potential) users. Collect characteristics that you find typical for each user, even if you’re not sure how useful it is. ...
2
votes
The Personal in Personas
That Jane is a call centre manager who has to deal with a high employee turnover, an antiquated computer system and customers who are annoyed at the constant 30 minute waits is all well and good. But ...
2
votes
Differences between Personas and Archetypes?
I don't agree with these categories.
Maybe the archetypes could be replaced by Personas vs Protopersonas, or stereotypes.
Archetypes based on Carl Gustav Jung's theory are collective unconscious ...
2
votes
Accepted
how to define the roles in a messaging app (ie like whatsapp)
Is this terminology for your usage, or will the user see this as well?
If this is for you, I would call the person using the app the "user", as usual.
If this is for the enduser, I would refer to ...
2
votes
How do you determine an appropriate number of personas?
Like many things in UX, it depends on your solution and how you are creating your persona, e.g. are you researching real users or basing them on roles or job titles?
Alan Cooper's book "About Face 3: ...
2
votes
Can I use 2 different User Journeys for the same Persona to show the flow of 2 different tasks that the user performs?
I treat personas as individuals who can have more than one task to accomplish on the site. Therefore, they can each have multiple user flows. I just completed a set of personas, each with 4-5 user ...
2
votes
Constructing personas without user research
I recently came across a technique called Proto-Personas in Leah Buley's The User Experience Team of One. This is a formalized technique that mirrors others' advice above (provisional personas, ad-hoc ...
2
votes
Combining personas and profiles rather than using them separately
I guess it depends on how you go about creating Personas.
Alan Cooper is credited with coming up with the persona concept in his book 'The Inmates Are Running the Asylum'. In his later book 'About ...
2
votes
Creating personas with different roles
You can have as many personas as you want - although, the more you have the more difficult they are to manage.
The point of a persona is to represent a key user type - If you have several key user ...
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