Flow Interactive consultants give an insightful tutorial on how to research, develop and design for personas.

1. Personas
Archetype, not
Stereotype

2. What are
personas?

3. Personas can look like this...

4. To design for your users
you must first
define who your users are

5. Where did the idea come from?
• A Persona is an artificial person, invented for the
purpose of helping a designer understand the
people who will be using their product.
• Pruitt and Adlin have traced their heritage to much
earlier. But to the modern design community, their
usage was popularized by Alan Cooper in 1998 in
his book quot;The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.quot;
Flow Interactive

6. Why do we use personas?

7. Different people have different needs
Flow Interactive

8. Personas also avoid designing
for the average user
A car for the “average” family
- average means nobody is really satisfied!
Flow Interactive

9. Misconceptions

10. What aren’t Personas?
• Stereotypes!!!
They are the synthesis of user research findings.
They are not simply made up!
• Users aren’t elastic.
Flow Interactive

11. Making personas

12. Contextual research
Watch, listen and learn in
the user’s environment.
What do people do?
What do they say?
How do they work?
Flow Interactive

13. When you can’t go into the field
Flow Interactive

14. This is what raw research findings look like:

16. Data driven personas
The clue is in the name!
The data comes from client’s in-
house knowledge.
The good stuff comes from
‘looking’ at how your users interact
with your website.
Good to use when you have a rich
set of data, such as Amazon,
Play.com, etc.
Flow Interactive

17. How much research?
Depends on how diverse your users’ behaviours really are.
Typically we find that behaviour is less diverse that you might
expect.
Anything from 6 to 20 respondents is typical and useful.
Sometimes do more for political reasons.
Supplement with all your existing data: search logs, surveys,
focus groups, customer facing staff
Examples…
First choice 15 lab
BUPA 20 lab
Yell 16 field
DfES 59 field

18. What’s an effective way of communicating these back
to your design team?
How can you make them ‘actionable’?
... and bring them to life for non-research lovers?
Flow Interactive

19. Personas and goals workshop
Price driven Quality driven
Nervous user Confident user
Fact driven Feeling driven
Wilma is a middle aged bookkeeper from
Hatfield. She uses Sage and Excel on a
rather old computer at work, but has
internet access at home. She has an eye
for a bargain but is a stickler for details.
Flow Interactive

21. Persona consist of goal statements:
• Life goals e.g. “get the big promotion!”
vs “be an ethical person”
• Experience goals: e.g. “have fun” vs
“get it done quickly” (1-2)
• End goals: e.g. “find the cheapest
flights”
• Design challenges. E.g. Why this
persona is important to the business,
and what to bear in mind
• And a motto
• One sentence that sums up the
persona

22. Personas come in two main flavours:
•
Primary persona – the primary persona is the singularly most
important person for whom the site should be designed. The
primary persona should always “emerge” from the set of
secondary personas: it should not be created from scratch.
Secondary personas – typically between three and seven of
these are generated from the ethnographic research first,
before the primary persona.
With big systems (e.g. CMS), you can have lots of different
user types, each of which you’d sum up as personas.
You can also have negative personas: people you want to
specifically exclude
Flow Interactive

23. Quick guide to personas
• Create a narrative – ideally, a one to two-page narrative
description for each persona
• Be specific – identify workflow and daily behavioural
patterns, using specific details, not generalities. Detail two
or three technical skills to give an idea of computer
competency
• Create mnemonic triggers – include one or two fictional
details about the persona's life, e.g. an interest or a habit
that make each persona unique and memorable
Flow Interactive

24. Quick guide to personas
• Use your imagination – don't use someone you actually
know as a persona. Try instead to create a composite
based on the qualitative data you have captured
• Strive for novelty – don't recycle a persona from a previous
project for a new project. Instead, do your ethnography
properly and create new personas for each project
Flow Interactive

25. Quick guide to personas
• Keep the numbers low – keep the number of personas
created for a project relatively small. Usually between three
and seven secondary personas, depending on the interface
project, from which will emerge the primary persona
• Be realistic – strive to develop a believable archetype so
the design team will accept the persona
Flow Interactive

29. Making & using personas
Review existing Recruit research Analyse existing Create the Introduce the
data and formulate subjects based on and new data personas. personas to the
persona the persona using collaborative organisation, as
hypothesis. hypothesis. affinity sorting Workshop: project style and
techniques. establish objectives require.
Perform contextual dimensions, create
research. sketches, select
Establish and flesh out
dimensions and personas. Assign
goals. goals.
Flow Interactive

30. Key things to consider:
• Fictional utility – personas are not quot;made upquot;. They are an
output of data analysis
• Imaginary, not woolly – although personas are imaginary,
they are archetypes not caricatures, and should be defined
with precision.
• Realism – names and personal details for personas should
be created to put contextual flesh on the archetypal bones
• Goals – personas should in the first instance be
differentiated and identified by their goals
• Persona-centric design – interfaces should be designed
and built to very specifically satisfy the needs and goals of
the primary persona
Flow Interactive

31. A travel site

32. Persona Case Study
Flow Interactive

33. •After a user study, we
analysed participants
responses to get an overview.
- Age and Segment
- Type of trip
- Motivations
- Frustrations
- Behaviours and Attitudes
- End Goals when researching and
booking travel online
Flow Interactive

34. •We mapped each
participant against key
behavioural axis:
- Planning in advance/Last minute
- Relax/Explore
- Attitude to risk
Flow Interactive

35. We located patterns of
behaviour and found groups
of users that ‘stuck
together’…
Flow Interactive

36. Book in Quality Relax Previous Previous hotel 1-2 trips a Maximiser Emotional Main researcher Travel alone 1-2 days Brand loyal Destination Web fresh Trust reviews
advance destination year driven
1,2,3,4 1,4,7,16, 1,4,5,6,7, 1,2,5,7,8, 1,17, 3,6,12 3,4,5,6,9, 1,2,3, 2,14 7,8,10, 19,17,20 1,3,7,8,10 3,10,14,15 8,14 3,4,5,6,9,
17,19,20 8,9,15, 910,15,16, 19,20 11,13,14, 12,13,14, 17,19,20 12,13,15, 11,13,14
17,19 17,19,20, 15,16,18 16,20 17,19,20 15,18,20
3-4 days
With friends
1,7,11,13,
15,16,18
3 -6 trips a Joint decision Relationship intermediate intermediate
5,6,7,8 3,12,13,
year driven
14,16,18 1 week
8,9,12
With partner
3,5,8,9,12, 3,5,8,9,12, 2,4,5,7,8, 3,4,5,6,8, 2,4,5,6,8 2,12,13, 2,8,10,
13,14,18 13,14,18 9,10,11,12 9,11,12, 15,`7 12,16,19
13,15,16,18 13,16,18
2 weeks
1,2,11,15,
9,10,11,
12,13,14
2,4,5,
6,10,14
2,6,10, 3,10,16 3,4,6, 2,3,4,5,6,7, 3,10,16 1,2,7, 4,5,6,7,8,9, 3,10,16 4,5,6,9 3 2,4,5,6,9, 1,7,17, 1,3,4,5,6, 1,7,17
15,16,17,
11,15 11,1213, 8,9,10,11, 8,10,12 10,11,15 14,16,18 19,20 7,9,10,
18,19,20
14,18 12,13,14 17,19,20 17,18,19 11,16,18,
15,16,18 19,20
Book last Price Explore New destination New 1-2 trips a Satisficer Practical Sole decision With family More than 2 Google Event driven Web savvy Don’t trust .
minute hotel month weeks
Flow Interactive

37. Book in Quality Relax Previous Previous hotel 1-2 trips a year Maximiser Emotional Main researcher Travel alone 1-2 days Brand loyal Destination Web fresh Trust reviews
advance destination driven
1,2,3,4 1,4,7,16, 1,4,5,6,7, 1,2,5,7,8, 1,17, 3,6,12 3,4,5,6,9, 1,2,3, 2,14 7,8,10, 19,17,20 1,3,7,8,10 3,10,14,15 8,14 3,4,5,6,9,
17,19,20 8,9,15, 910,15,16, 19,20 11,13,14, 12,13,14, 17,19,20 12,13,15, 11,13,14
17,19,20 17,19,20 15,16,18 16 17,19,20 15,18,20
With friends
1,7,11,13,
15,16,18
Don’t look
3 -6 trips a Joint decision Relationship intermediate
5,6,7,8 for reviews
3,12,13,
year driven
14,16,18 1 week
8,9,12
With partner
3,5,8,9,12, 3,5,8,9,12, 1,2,4,5,7,8, 3,4,5,6,8, 2,4,5,6,8 2,12,13, 2,8,10,
13,14,18 13,14,18 9,10,11,13, 9,10,11,12 9,11,12, 15,`7 12,16,19
14,15,16,18 13,15,16,18 13,16,18
2 weeks
1,2,11,15,
9,10,11,
12,13,14
2,4,5,
6,10,14
2,6,10, 3,10,16 3,4,6, 2,3,4,5,6,7, 17,19,20 1,2,7, 4,5,6,7,8,9, 1,7,17, 4,5,6,9 3 2,4,5,6,9, 1,7,17, 1,3,4,5,6, 1,7,17
15,16,17,
11,15 11,1213, 8,9,10,11, 8,10,12 10,11,15 20,19 14,16,18 19,20 7,9,10,
18,19,20
14,18 12,13,14 17,19,20 17,18,19,20 11,16,18,
15,16,18 19,20
Book last Price Explore New destination New 1-2 trips a Satisficer Practical Sole decision With family More than 2 Google Event driven Web savvy Don’t trust
minute hotel month weeks reviews .
Flow Interactive

38. Flow Interactive

39. Flow Interactive

40. Flow Interactive

41. Using personas

42. Personas are the first step to innovation
5 Contextual research
1
1 2 Concept
4
Prototype
3
4 Specify
Build and launch
5
2
3
And they are useful throughout They are a fundamental
the rest of the design* process! tool for innovation.
* Design is the whole thing,
not just the graphics

43. Personas: Used as a communication tool
•It all about getting everyone to sing off the same song
sheet
•Focusing on users
•Reducing arguments
They enable decision making because you can ‘query’
them as if they were a ‘real’ person
•Standardised approach
•Common language
•They fill in the gaps between user-studies - you can’t have
users on-site all the time. Flow Interactive

44. Mood boards
Flow Interactive

45. Bed time reading

46. Bed time reading

47. Bed time reading

48. References
▪ Carroll, John M. Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions.
MIT Press, 2000. ISBN 0-262-03279-1
▪ Carroll, J.M. ed. Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System
Development. Wiley, 1995. ISBN 0-471-07659-7
▪ Chapman, C.N. & Milham, R. The personas' new clothes. Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society (HFES) 2006, San Francisco, CA. October 2006. [1]
▪ Cooper, Alan. The Inmates are Running the Asylum. SAMS, 1999. ISBN 0-672-31649-8
▪ Grudin, J. and Pruitt, J. Personas, participatory design and product development: an
infrastructure for engagement. Paper presented at Participatory Design Conference 2002,
Malmo, Sweden. June 2002.
▪ Pruitt, John & Adlin, Tamara. The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout
Product Design. Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. ISBN 0-12-566251-3
▪ Rönkkö, K. An empirical study demonstrating how different design constraints, project
organization, and contexts limited the utility of personas. Hawaii International Conference
on System Sciences (HICSS) 2005, Waikoloa, HI. January 2005.

49. [Client: project, Date]