ABSTRACT
Into Personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Moving toward precision means moving
away from accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Incorporate narrative and
storytelling elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Illustrate your personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Step 6:Validate Your Personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Completed personas do not mark the end
of user research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Phase 3: Persona Birth & Maturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Persona Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Agree on the specific goal of the artifact . . . . . . . . . 109
Agree on the audience, timing, and
distribution method for the artifact . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Agree on the information elements that
should (and should not) be included
on the artifact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Agree on the relative priorities of the
information elements on the artifact . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Phase 4: Persona Adulthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Use Personas for Product Planning, Design,
Evaluation, and Release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Personas are a new and relatively popular technique used to help bring users into the forefront of people’s minds during the difficult process of developing products and services. Yet, for many practitioners, the persona method remains largely ill defined and mysterious. In this chapter, we present a simple framework for approaching the technique-the persona lifecycle-which sheds light on how personas fit into a standard development cycle. We then provide a little detail on two critical aspects of the method: creating and using personas. Our goal is to enable the reader to quickly and easily get started with the technique.
