Defining Personas is an introduction to the usage of "Personas" in User Experience. Helps identifying the user groups of the website we're developing...by selecting characteristics of those groups.

1. Defining Personas A User Experience Approach Leon Kadoch Hardie Information Architect Panama City, Rep. of Panama kadoch@tupolitica.com

2. Importance

3. Personas are fictitious characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product Useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of the users in order to help to guide decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design

4. Why are we talking about this? Personas are most often used as part of: User-centered Design Interaction Design (IxD), Industrial Design.

5. Also A persona may be synthesised from a series of "field activities" such as interviews and work observations resulting in a representation of an individual that embody the characteristics of a target user population

6. Baby steps

11. Why are we using them ? Powerful Communication Tool

12. acquire the mindset of his/her character or in other words to become that character

13. representation of the goals andbehavior of a real group of users

14. When it is not possible to ask a user, then… try with the ‘persona’.

15. Develop the personas during the research phase Analyze all your existing data (traffic stats,etc.) Group the users according to the goal and business objective

16. But… “They’re NOT real users !”

17. Results are Empirical Verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic

18. What’s in a ‘Persona’ ?

19. Answer ! Name Photo Age Education Family Status Job title and responsibilities Goals and Tasks in your website environment (physical, social, technological) a quote that sums up what matters most to the persona with relevance for your site

20. How do we get the information? Contextual Interviews Individual Interviews Surveys (Online) Focus Groups Usability Testing

21. Contextual Interview watch and listen as users work

22. Contextual Interview watch and listen as users work Individual Interview Talking to the user by phone, IM, face-to-face. No need to watch the user work

23. Surveys structured interviews with users, where youdisplay a list of questions online and record users' responses Focus Group Moderated discussion between a group of people with subjects previously selected

24. Usability Testing Representative users try to do typical tasks with the product, while observers, including the development staff, watch, listen, and take notes.

26. Examples

30. Accessibility counts !

31. Task Analysis & Scenarios

32. Leon Kadoch Hardie:. Information Architect Panama, Rep. of Panama www.leon-kadoch.com kadoch@tupolitica.com