
Check How To Create UX Personas In Four Easy Steps
This is the age when your web identity – your portal, app, etc. is the face of your brand. A user will create first impressions and images by the experience they pass through when they use the website. The web visitors are the ones who will make several decisions based on several criteria out of which UX is of prime importance as nobody wants to buy from a site that looks unsafe or which gives technical errors or that doesn’t give a good feel.
UX Personas is to find out what is the exact personality of the user(s) who are going to visit the website and make buying decisions. Creating this persona will help the designers design a website that suits the real consumer, instead of the one that suits them. For example, a children’s website may be full of colors and attractive animations, but a website used by top executives would use pastel shades and easy to go elements also giving them a sense of security in doing transactions.
Creating UX Persona(s) will enable the team of designers, developers and managers to exactly understand what the project is meant for. Based on this information, they would be able to decide which are the designs and elements that are suitable for the project.
There are four easy steps that would help the team to create UX Persona for your brand. A very powerful tool in UI/UX design.
Data collection
Collection of data of existing users, non-users and users of similar products would be the starting point. The data would include things like demographics, likes, dislikes, habits, spending patterns etc. depending on the type of product. Some fictitious data would also be added to the real data to create a real feel. For example if the UX persona is a young adult college going up-market female, we will give the personal a fictitious name of Lucy who studies in St. Stephen’s College to give a feel to the designer.
The data could be collected through face interviews, personally or using technology. Surveys are good tools, especially with lots of websites offering free and paid surveys with required databases. Government statistics could also play a role in the data, but they need to be fresh. There is a lot of data that is time bound. It has to be taken care that the time bound data is used in the given time frame only otherwise the research may go all wrong. For example, user’s likes and dislikes in winter may be different from those in summer. A design created with only partial time-bound inputs would not be effective in all cases.
Analysis and Research
The data collected should be analyzed to search the core message. First of all the data has to be categorized into attributes, which would indicate the features of majority users. The researcher also needs to look beyond the answers. They would have to explore what the user is trying to achieve and what makes them happier. A thorough analysis would help list out the features, attributes and the aspects related to the exact users who are buying the product or who we are targeting to visit and make a buying decision.
The analysis and research have to be finally presented in a clear and lucid manner, in a way that all team members are exactly able to understand it. For example, an input with financial jargons and terminologies may not be understandable for a science graduate.
Create Persona(s)
Ideally there would be more than one user persona as different types of people would be using the products or services. By experiences it is said that 4 UX personas would be suitable. But, there could be more also.
Based on the analysis and research of survey results, you need to create the profile of a fictitious person who has the attributes and likes, dislikes your target user has. It will be a simple sheet like bio-data of the person with things that matter to the designers and brand described clearly.
It is most important to understand that UX Personas are about fictitious people, but should not have any fictitious imaginary data derived through guesses, judgments or other non-scientific methods. Each attribute on the persona needs to track back to the real data achieved through data collection, research and analysis. If it is not scientifically achieved it should not exist on the persona created.
There are times when the company does not have time or resources to conduct interviews, surveys etc. UX personas could be created in these types of cases also by looking at the users of competitive products. By trying to go through the social media accounts of competitors and people interacting there can give useful insights on designing your UX persona. Web analytics and other service logs can also be used for creating this persona. However, this personal is Provisional Persona. It could be used until it is replaced by the real UX Persona.
It is advisable to add a fictitious picture to go with the persona to give more connection between the designers and the persona.
Clubbing Persona(s) with Scenario(s)
Humans behave differently in different circumstances and situations. A single person’s choices may change in different scenarios. For example, a person may like to have hot coffee during day time, but may get turned-off by hot coffees at night. He/she would instead prefer a cold coffee. Personas have to be clubbed with scenarios to give it real life understanding.
Various scenarios would be assumed by the analyst and what are the behavioral patterns of persona in those scenarios would be carefully carved out. This would give a complete account of UX persona to the designer. Clubbing Persona and Scenario would make the designer understand how exactly the users are expected to behave in different situations and they would be able to create a design and place elements to match these requirements.
Conclusion
Creating Persona is critical for the success of a product and strengthening of a brand. A person who doesn’t know what the actual user likes, may fail in making several decisions to make the client happy and in turn get business. Persona could be considered as a very powerful tool in UI/UX designs.
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