Persona in User-centered Design
This is written to fulfil individual review criteria for PPL Fasilkom UI 2021.
Design has always been a part of the software development process. Regardless of the importance of code implementation in software, design surely is essential as well. We need to remember that the main purpose of developing software is to meet user needs and to be used by users. This is the reason that it’s very important to do user-centered design.
What is a user-centered design?
User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers and other stakeholders focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. UCD calls for involving users throughout the design process via a variety of research and design techniques so as to create highly usable and accessible products for them.
— Definition of user-centered design (UCD) by the Interaction Design Foundation
User-centered design (UCD) is a set of processes that focus on putting users at the center of the product design. Users will be involved throughout the design process so that their requirements, perspective, and feedback can be taken into account. This way, the resulting product will be more usable and accessible to them.
How to start applying user-centered design?
The very first step to applying user-centered design is to identify target users and their attributes. In this step, we have to identify who will be our primary users, why they will use the product, what are their requirements and under what environment they will use it. Then, with this data, we have to formulate the most suitable requirements to make sure it meets users needs. However, user-centered design is an iterative process so our design still has a chance to evolve from a rough draft to a finalized design.
Persona
One of the things that can help the process of identifying target users is by identifying a persona. Persona is a capture of characteristics of typical users that are relevant to the product under development. It is created at the beginning of the process to be an example of the target user. It also can be synthesized from real people based on user research. Therefore, it surely can visualize the target user better. Nonetheless, we have to remember that persona is considered as a representation of a typical user, not an idealized user.
In what way persona can help the design process?
As I mentioned earlier, a persona can be synthesized from real people based on user research. That research usually produces 1–2 page descriptions that include behaviour patterns, skills, attitudes, goals, environment with a few fictional spices about personal detail to bring them into life. This way, it can help the designers to understand the user needs, experiences, goals, and behaviours so they know what has to be added to the product. It also helps the designer to understand and be empathy with the end-user. In other words, persona helps to achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for target users.
How to define a user persona?
- User persona research and data collection
Conducting interviews, observing people with context to reveal their mindsets and behaviours. This helps the product team to avoid creating a stereotypical user. - Analyze research data
Grouping user characteristics into clusters to have a better picture of them. - Create and prioritize each user persona
Constructing each persona’s description. - Map interaction scenarios
Illustrating how a persona will interact with the product in a context to achieve the primary goal. - Validate with the product team
Sharing the final persona with the product team, including stakeholders. It’s needed to internalize the user persona so everyone in the team can find value in them.
Persona in PPL project
For my team project, which is “Personalized diet coaching tools & apps”, it’s a fortune that our client has given us a lot of details regarding the product including the persona itself. Therefore, we don’t have to develop the persona by ourselves. We just do some polishing like giving them names and more backgrounds to bring them into life. However, to give a better understanding of the product, my team is willing to learn the persona. We have already had a presentation regarding the design sprint (which includes persona) where we can present our understanding of the product that will be developed. Thankfully, our lecturer and our client approved so it’s safe to say that our team has completely got the picture of our product.
My project has 2 personas, one represents a client and the other represents a nutritionist. Here are the details:
With these personas, we become more and more aware of what problems are being faced so that this application is needed to solve the problems. By having a deeper understanding of that, we become empathetic and the desire to be able to complete this application increases as we know that this application will be useful in the future.
Now, I want to give some examples regarding personas and their relation to wireframe/HiFi and backend automation that my group has created.
Some examples of the relationship between the persona component and the wireframe/HiFi that has been made:
For nutritionists/clients who may not understand technology, we create a chat that resembles an instant messaging application that is commonly used today (especially by middle-aged people) in Indonesia, WhatsApp. It can be felt by the overall design, especially for the text input form. In this way, users will be pretty familiar with the chat feature, so they don’t have to bother learning new things anymore.
Our personas also include “super busy” clients. So, we provide a preview of the meal plan document that nutritionists provide. This preview can save enough time for the client to view the document without waiting for the download time first.
Example of the relationship between the persona component and automation built on backend:
Given that the client is quite busy, if someone must map the Dietela quiz results manually, it is likely that the client will wait too long before finally getting a recommendation for a suitable diet program to take. Then, considering nutritionists who may not be responsive to technology, it might not be accessible if they have to provide formulas that can be executed automatically for mapping the quiz results to clients. Thus, all formulas will be automated in the backend. When the client fills in the Dietela quiz and clicks submit, all formulas will be automatically executed in the backend, and the client can immediately receive the results.
I also want to give a little review of the personas in the PRD document. In my opinion, the personas that are made is still too rough because it doesn’t have the components that a persona must have such as name, background, points such as goals, motivations, etc. Meanwhile, the personas in the PRD only narratively tell an outline. The persona created in the PRD still does not include each persona’s potential obstacles as well, so I think it will be better to have some.
In conclusion, persona has a critical role in user-centered design, whereas user-centered design is an important part of product design. Both of them are crucial elements in terms of product design.
That’s all for now. I hope whoever you are who are reading this can gain new knowledge from here! Thank you for reading this far, and I’m sorry for any mistakes that I make here :D
Author:
Glenda Emanuella Sutanto
PPL-D 2021
Reference:
- Reference 1
- Reference 2
- Reference 3
- Reference 4
- Reference 5
- Panduan UIUX PPL 2021
- Referensi UI dan UX PPL 2021