Difference between revisions of "User personas"
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
== History == | == History == | ||
User personas were coined by Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer best known for Visual Basic, user experience, and interaction design (5). Cooper proposed the idea of user personas while working on a software related project. As Cooper worked through design problems of his own, he realized that there was a gap between software authors and the actual users that would be using the products. As reported in his first book, __, he realized the question to be asked was “how do users interact with this?” Up until this point, software had been constructed in a way that focused on the way to code and not the way to design in order to meet user needs. Copper began to use a persona role-playing technique while navigating his own design problems, thus ideating the first types of user personas. | User personas were coined by Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer best known for Visual Basic, user experience, and interaction design (5). Cooper proposed the idea of user personas while working on a software related project. As Cooper worked through design problems of his own, he realized that there was a gap between software authors and the actual users that would be using the products. As reported in his first book, __, he realized the question to be asked was “how do users interact with this?” Up until this point, software had been constructed in a way that focused on the way to code and not the way to design in order to meet user needs. Copper began to use a persona role-playing technique while navigating his own design problems, thus ideating the first types of user personas. | ||
| + | |||
| + | As Cooper began developing his user persona methodology, he began spreading his new insight to other companies in the software industry. By focusing on design methodologies, Cooper started articulating some of his own design principles that would later make up the foundation of user personas. The common theme was that products should be designed with the users’ needs as the priority. In 1999, user personas were publicly introduced in Cooper’s book The Inmates are Running the Asylum <ref>Cooper, A.: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams - Pearson Education, Indianapolis (1999)</ref>. User personas quickly gained popularity in the online business and technology world after this breakthrough. In the book, Cooper provided an overview of persona qualities, use cases, and other recommendations for creating personas. Today, Cooper’s user centered design strategies are accepted widely across the human-computer interaction industry. As user personas have become more widespread, they have become more developed and different strategies have come to existence. | ||
Revision as of 18:34, 28 January 2022
A user persona (also customer persona, user type, archetype) in human-computer design is a fabricated profile used to represent realistic aspects of the user or customer segment intended to use certain applications, websites, or other digital products. [1] Personas embody important aspects of the users they are intended to describe and meant to personify user data. [2] User personas are a method of taking a diverse and complex audience and summarizing all of their data into a few archetypes that sum up their needs and desires. [3] While a popular method of representing hypothesized users, personas can be an incredibly powerful tool for designing products if done properly. However, those creating personas must be cautious of stereotype and classification implications.
In the user-centered design community specifically, user personas help user experience designers, researchers, product managers, and more when it comes to making design decisions for their products. A user persona profile typically includes an imaginary name, picture, and summary of various attitudes, behaviors, and goals for the user that it is trying to portray. [4] There is no standard template for creating user personas; therefore, they can be used to represent various characteristics of users. Ultimately, user personas visualize a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data that can later be used in the problem solving processes in various industries.
History
User personas were coined by Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer best known for Visual Basic, user experience, and interaction design (5). Cooper proposed the idea of user personas while working on a software related project. As Cooper worked through design problems of his own, he realized that there was a gap between software authors and the actual users that would be using the products. As reported in his first book, __, he realized the question to be asked was “how do users interact with this?” Up until this point, software had been constructed in a way that focused on the way to code and not the way to design in order to meet user needs. Copper began to use a persona role-playing technique while navigating his own design problems, thus ideating the first types of user personas.
As Cooper began developing his user persona methodology, he began spreading his new insight to other companies in the software industry. By focusing on design methodologies, Cooper started articulating some of his own design principles that would later make up the foundation of user personas. The common theme was that products should be designed with the users’ needs as the priority. In 1999, user personas were publicly introduced in Cooper’s book The Inmates are Running the Asylum [5]. User personas quickly gained popularity in the online business and technology world after this breakthrough. In the book, Cooper provided an overview of persona qualities, use cases, and other recommendations for creating personas. Today, Cooper’s user centered design strategies are accepted widely across the human-computer interaction industry. As user personas have become more widespread, they have become more developed and different strategies have come to existence.- ↑ Pruitt, J., Grudin, J.: Personas: practice and theory. In: Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on Designing for User Experiences, San Francisco, California, USA, pp. 1–15. ACM (2003). https://doi.org/10.1145/997078.997089
- ↑ An, J., Kwak, H., Salminen, J., Jung, S., Jansen, B.J.: Imaginary people representing real numbers: generating personas from online social media data. ACM Trans. Web (TWEB) 12 (4), 1–26 (2018)
- ↑ Salminen, J., et al.: From 2,772 segments to five personas: summarizing a diverse online audience by generating culturally adapted personas. First Monday 23, 8415 (2018). https:// doi.org/10.5210/fm.v23i6.8415
- ↑ Nielsen, L., Hansen, K.S., Stage, J., Billestrup, J.: A template for design personas: analysis of 47 persona descriptions from Danish industries and organizations. Int. J. Sociotechnol. Knowl. Dev. 7, 45–61 (2015). https://doi.org/10.4018/ijskd.2015010104
- ↑ Cooper, A.: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams - Pearson Education, Indianapolis (1999)
