Personas are fictional yet data-driven profiles that represent typical users of a product or service. They are developed through user research and are intended to capture the goals, needs, behaviours, and pain points of different user segments. The goal of creating personas is to guide design decisions with a clear understanding of the end-users, ensuring the final product meets their expectations and needs.
Four different perspectives on personas
Lene Nielsen, Ph.D. and persona specialist, describes four perspectives of personas in her encyclopediae chapter on personas. When your personas take on these different perspectives, you ensure they have the best chance to add maximum value to your design project. Let’s take a look at each one of these perspectives in turn:
Goal-directed personas
This persona cuts straight to the nitty-gritty. It focuses on this question: “What does my typical user want to do with my product?”
The objective of a goal-directed persona is to examine the process your user prefers to utilise to achieve their objectives when they interact with your product or service. There is an implicit assumption you have already done enough user research to recognise your product has value to your users, and when you examine their goals in more detail, you can bring their requirements to life.
Goal-directed personas are based upon the perspectives of Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer, who is widely recognised as the “Father of Personas”.
Role-based personas
The role-based perspective is also goal-directed, yet it has a specific focus on behaviour.
The personas of the role-based perspectives are massively data-driven and incorporate data from both qualitative and quantitative sources. For example, a role-based perspective could focus on the user’s job role, because your designs need to reflect how crucial and integral your users are to the organisation they work for. A deeper examination of the roles your users typically play in real life can therefore help inform better product design decisions.
When you create this type of persona, you will answer questions such as these: Where will the product be used? What is the purpose of your users’ job role? What business objectives are related to this role? Who else is impacted by the duties of this role? What functions are served by this role?
Jonathan Grudin, John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin are all advocates for the role-based perspective.
Engaging personas
Engaging personas can incorporate both goal-directed and role-based personas, as well as the more traditional rounded personas.
These engaging personas are designed so designers who use them can become more engaged with the personas. The idea is to create a 3D rendering of a user through the use of personas. The more people who engage with the persona and see them as “real”, the more likely they will be to consider the persona during the design process and want to serve them with the best product.
Engaging personas examine the emotions of the user, their psychology and their background to make them relevant to the task at hand.
This perspective emphasises how powerful stories can be to engage others and bring people to life, and one of the advocates for this perspective is Lene Nielsen.
Proto personas
Proto personas do not emerge from user research like the other personas do, but instead emerge from the assumptions of the Product team.
Proto personas require the team to make assumptions based upon past interactions with users and products to deliver a picture of what typical users potentially look like.
There’s no doubt these personas can be deeply flawed (and there are endless debates on just how flawed they may turn out), but you may be able to use them to create an initial sketch of user needs.
Proto personas allow for an early stake in the ground during the product development process, but they should not, of course, be trusted as a reliable guide for the development of your products and services.