
Written by
Kathryn KitchenPersonas have been around since the mid ‘90s, and the popularity of personas can ebb and flow. What is the challenge with personas?
Written by
Kathryn KitchenPersonas are fictional characters based on real data created to represent the core users of a site or product. They are created from sources like interviews, surveys, focus groups, and usability studies. Good personas are invaluable in getting the user-focused perspective, not just as the product is first being designed, but throughout the product lifecycle phases. While there are plenty of posts written about how to create personas this blog focuses on how to keep the personas alive long after their creation is complete.
Personas have been around since the mid ‘90s, and the popularity of personas can ebb and flow. What is the challenge with personas? Time investment can be one hurdle—it can take time to create good personas based on user data. However, once the investment is made, the biggest challenge can be keeping the personas alive and in the forefront of project teams. The life of a persona can be short lived—they may influence requirements and early product ideas, only to be shelved after the initial creation and excitement has lost its momentum.
Given that personas are so useful throughout the product lifecycle, what can you do to keep them alive? How do you keep your product team engaged and excited about your personas even in the development and user acceptance testing phase of the project? Here are some suggested approaches:
Keeping the personas alive will ensure the entire development cycle is based on a user-centered approach. Real-time feedback from users will spark passion in the team for persona-driven developments. Other than recruitment time, this effort doesn’t have to be a huge time investment. You could plan a two-hour session focused on the highest priority areas that benefit most from user feedback. The return from this effort far outweighs the time investment: benefits include a stronger personal connection with your personas and validation of scenarios and assumptions about the user experience.
Think about what you would ask your users right now if you brought them into a room for a discussion. What are your assumptions about your product today? What questions might your team have that could be easily validated by a conversation with your users? How long has it been since the personas you’ve created have been referenced in a meeting? If the answer is even two weeks ago, now’s the time to reignite that connection.
Kathryn works in user research at Blink with 10 years of previous experience with Microsoft. She is very passionate about solving highly technical user-centered design problems. In her spare time Kathryn enjoys painting in her studio, and as a native Texan she still loves good BBQ and blues music.