1) Personas are archetypes that represent groups of real users who share common attributes and needs. They help product teams focus on the needs of target users rather than their own assumptions. 2) Effective personas are based on research such as interviews with real users or experts. They describe a fictional person through demographic details, goals, skills and a narrative day-in-the-life. 3) Personas prevent self-referential thinking and help ensure features meet the needs of the intended users. They provide a clear and memorable target for teams to design towards.

1. 2
v
Personas
Knowing your participants
ZSI, ilse Marschalek, Carmen Siller

2. 3
Premise
We all have biases, assumptions, and perspectives. Naturally, we all tend to cater in our work to our own
preferences, desires, and ways of thinking.
We are not our potential participants.
We needto address their needsand requirements and not our own.
There are methods to ensure we address the needs and requirements of our potential participants.

3. 4
How can we address the needs and requirements
of different potential participants/citizen
scientists?
Question
Answer
By better understanding our potential
participants.
But who are our potential participants?

4. 5
Problem
We have lots of
potential participants!
How can we address the
needs and requirements
of them all?

5. 6
Developed by American software designer Alan Cooper
in the early 1980s
Pioneered the use of personas as practicalinteraction design tool to create high-tech
products.
The persona concept became popular in recent years inthe context of Design Thinking
and Service Design and is widely used by companies of allsizes aswell asin project work.
History of the Persona concept

6. 7
Personas are archetypes (models) that represent groups
of real people who have similar attributes.
A persona is depicted as aspecific person but is not a real individual.
A persona is usuallycaptured on one page, describing their personal characteristics,
interests, skills,competences, attitudes and feelings, including some fictionalpersonal
details.
Persona (from Latin for mask)

7. 8
- fake participants/citizen scientists
- stereotypes
- average participants
- roles
Personas are not …

8. 9
Personas are ideal …
- to enable to focus on a manageable and memorable cast of characters whose needs
and requirements are addressed, producing a clear target to aim for.
- to prevent self-referential thinking.
- to help implementing the right features to the right people in the right way.
Why use Personas?

9. 10
Personas are ideal …
- when none of the decision makers is a member of the target group for the decision.
- when the potential target group is very large, asthey help to avoid the “elastic target”
that morphs as own perspectives change.
When use Personas?

10. 11
Personas is storytelling
with data.
In short

11. 12
 Name
 Demographic details (ethnicity, age …)
 Descriptive title
 Photograph
 Personality, attitudes, life tidbits (job, children, hobbies …)
 Skills/competences
 Motivations, goals
 Frustrations, fears
 A-day-in-the-life narrative
Elements to develop a persona

12. 13
Ideally
 Interview and/or observe anadequate number of people
 Find patterns in their responses and actions, use those to group similar people
together
 Create archetypical models of those groups based on the patterns found
How to develop a persona

13. 14
The next best thing to talking directly to potential
participants is to interview people who have more
knowledge about certain target groups than you have.
 Information will be filtered and biased
 Personas created from second-hand information are called provisional personas
 Easyto create
 Help to understand why personas are useful
Alternative

14. 15
 It is more important that a persona be precise than
accurate. (Alan Cooper)
Developing personas

15. 16
v
@StepChangeEU
@StepChangeEU
Follow us:
This project hasreceived fundingfrom the European
Union’sHorizon2020 researchandinnovation
programmeundergrantagreementNo 101006386