Personas
(1)
As a developer formulating user stories,
I want to look up examples for our target audiences
So that I can target our target audience.
(2)
As a designer,
I want to design around actual use cases
So that my designs are actually useful.
(3)
As an author,
I want my articles to speak to an audience;
Therefore I need some sort of reference reader.
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A set of 7±n personas spanning all relevant roles, communities and bodies is defined, with each representing someone – who exists
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In that case, their persona is defined through research
– or who is strongly wanted
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In that case, a documented task referring to that persona is linked
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Each persona definition (max. 1 page; no excessive detailing) includes: -
Name; Picture (can be a photo or a funny drawing), First-person Quote summarizing their motivation -
Demographics: Include age, gender, past and present occupations, education, income – they help make the persona tangible. -
User environment: Specify devices, collaborators and social groups, places (home, office, field), typical situations where the persona is interacting with ecobytes. -
Attitudes; Interests; Motivations; Pain points – these don't need to connect with ecobytes. This is mostly about constructing tacit empathy. -
End goals: These may explain how the persona is connected to the ecobytes website. -
Scenario: A "day in the life of". Written in first person, around contact points with the ecobytes website.
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Every developer, designer and author has read+write access to these definitions. There are no knowledge/physical/social/... barriers to that access. -
The definitions are not set in stone. We can discuss, alter, differenciate and remove them.
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IBM has a relevant quote:
The best way to do this is to find your target users and spend time with them.
If we start using personas, we should also conduct user research. That can be as simple as talking to each other about their experience with the website. Writing our tech blog will give us great user insight which will in turn inform the personas: in that case, the users are us, and the use case is developing the website.