Why do we use personas?
For the web design industry, personas are of great importance and use for narrowing down your design goals and to have a clear and directed target audience. If you don’t know who you are designing something for, how do you know what to put into that product? How would you go about creating a walking for a hiker verses an elderly person or someone who is visually impaired? Sure you could create one that caters to all of the above people and that has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in, but that would be one expensive walking stick and how would you know that it would sell? How do you know that it meets the needs of the people who you are trying to get to buy it?
Personas are used in all types of areas. These are just a few just off the top of my head:
- Engineering
- Automotive
- Consumer products
- Marketing
- Blog Creation
- Website Creation
- User Interface /User Experience design
- Search Engine Optimization
- App Development
So, how does one go about creating a persona? It just so happens that there are a number of really great articles out there that are super helpful in creating personas. Here are a few:
- Creating Personas
- A Closer Look At Personas, a 2-part article from Smashing Magazine
- Personas: The Art and Science of Understanding the Person Behind the Visit
- Create Precise Buyer Personas With SEO Data: A 10-Step Guide
Hopefully this will give you some great ammunition to get you thinking and working with personas within your particular field. It may take a bit of effort to get it put together, but this is effort well spent and having a persona will save you much more time in the long run.
Cheers!
-Matthew Vazquez