Persona

A persona is a fictional person who represents a major user group for your site. Personas bring many benefits, including these:

• Users goals and needs become a common point of focus for the team.
• The team can concentrate on designing for a manageable set of personas knowing that they represent the needs of many users.
• By always asking, “Would Jim use this?” the team can avoid the trap of building what users ask for rather than what they will actually use.
• Design efforts can be prioritized based on the personas.
• Disagreements over design decisions can be sorted out by referring back to the personas.
• Designs can be constantly evaluated against the personas, getting better designs into usability testing.

According to Forrester, many companies including Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, and Staples develop and use personas and they report many benefits from doing so, including:

• A better understanding of customers
• Shorter design cycles
• Improved product quality

For more info: usability.gov/analyze/personas.html

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