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Keep your project focused on who you are trying to design for using personas and scenarios.
Design personas are detailed character portraits of the intended users of your digital interface and often represent some of the most challenging types of user. If you can successfully design for these users you will develop a great universal experience.
Personas draw on any, and all, available sources of research and insight about your target customers. We will often develop them in workshops, inviting client stakeholders like marketers, customer service people, designers and developers.
The process explores important dimensions like demographics, usage patterns, attitudes and values to create a number of personas. We then whittle these down to the three or four most valuable and challenging.
Beyond personas you can develop user scenarios. These are essentially storyboards of customer journeys, goals and interactions. They can be useful because they create a task flow against which any new design can be checked.
Personas and scenarios can be extremely effective in guiding a design team to a successful delivery, but we should sound a note of caution: in the wrong hands personas can fail to have a positive impact.
The reasons for this are often around project culture. Teams using personas need to have consensus that they are realistic and relevant; failure to gain this will mean that some parts of the team aren’t committed to using them.
Personas and scenarios must be used rigorously, with formal procedures around how and when design ideas will be validated against them.
We are disappointed by digital design agencies that create personas and then ‘park’ them in a drawer while creative types follow their instincts. Any digital design process where personas are used to replace (rather than complement) primary research with real users is on very shaky ground.
We would be happy to discuss with you how personas and scenarios could add value to your next project. Please get in touch.
