INNOVATION TOOLS - PERSONAS

2.24.2009

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Experience goals describe how the persona wants to feel when using a product; having fun and not feeling stupid are experience goals. Not every persona needs an experience goal; in most persona sets, there is one persona who represents people with a lot of anxiety about technology. One of this person's goals is to avoid feeling stupid. Other experience goals might center on the product domain. A persona using an online banking site, for example, might want to feel confident that his transactions are secure.

Most persona goals should be end goals that focus on what the persona could get out of using a well-designed product or service. End goals may involve the work product that results from using the product or service. For example, an online editor using a layout tool might want to create an award-winning website. End goals can also involve indirect benefits from using a product. If a carpenter wants to be more productive, a better cordless drill can help her achieve this goal if it makes him more efficient.

Make personas must be specific to the design problem at hand. For instance, organizations with more than one product often want to use the same personas over and over Unfortunately, this doesn't work because effective personas must be context-specific-they should be focused on the behaviors and goals related to the specific domain of a product. A persona's behaviors and goals related to contact management have very little to do with those related to manipulating financial data. You could keep the same name and personal details, but you'd have to throw away the rest of the persona and start over. It's better to start with a new set of personas for each product.

Introducing personas into your innovation project will bring a number of benefits:

• 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
• They are relatively quick to develop and replace the need to canvass the whole user community and spend months gathering user requirements
• They help 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, reducing the frequency of large and expensive usability tests.

Personas allow you to identify and communicate user needs efficiently and effectively. By developing 'stand in' users, based on real user data, the design team can concentrate on designing for these archetypal users with the confidence that the needs of the broader user base will be meet.

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