1. 7
Things to do with a Persona
Seeing people, context & perspective
A UIE-Rosenfeld Media Virtual Seminar
May 22, 2012
Whitney Quesenbery
WQusability

2. Personas highlight the individual
Personas help us understand
users,
not as part of a group, or
a demographic, but as
individuals with a
history, goals, interests,
and a relationship to
the information or site

3. Have a chat with them
Once you have finished creating the personas,
spend some time exploring their perspectives
on different situations, contexts or activities.
 Get to know them better
 Explore their reactions, stories, emotions,
likes, dislikes
 Think outside your product or project

4. Invite them to meet your friends
Let the rest of the team (and stakeholders) ask
them questions. Cover the general context, or
a specific issue.
 What questions do you want to ask?
 How will the persona answer…in their own
words?
 Stretch the boundaries (and find research
gaps)

5. Tell their story
Don’t talk about them. Be them. Try telling
their story in first person. Do you have a
strong sense of their reactions?
 Informance: Representing an idea by
acting in order to explore, explain and
share it.
 Role playing: Act out the interaction of
service

6. Ask their opinion
Review a new idea or design through the
perspective of the personas. Channel them to
learn their reactions.
 Persona-led reviews
 First click analysis
 What’s missing?

7. Find them in the wild
They started life as a way to analyse data from
the real world. Now make sure that you can
match the personas up with the people you
meet in user research and usability testing.
 Use the personas to identify research
participants
 Find new stories to keep making the
personas even richer

8. Personas can be part of everything we do
Gather information - both
qualitative and
quantitative Understand
Reflect patterns in
ability, aptitude and
attitude
Evaluate Specify
Evaluate work in
progress, or set
recruiting targets Stories explore
for usability Design current problems and
testing new design ideas