###### tags: `reading`

# Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team members

## Definition
* A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user.
* Personas should be described as if they were real people.
* The description should be thorough, including the persona's needs, concerns and goals, as well as backgroud info.
* Focus on the those user characteristics tha impact what is being designed.
* Usually several personas to cover the various aspects of a business, one or two are the main targets.
* Personas work because designers and developers are captivated more by concrete instances than by abstractions and generalizations.
* No.1 job of a persona: to make sure all team members remember the users they are building the product for.

## Personas Are Not User Groups
* The statistics of user groups are too impersonal and are difficult to keep in mind when designing.
* A persona highlights specific details and important features of the group.

## When to Create Personas
* As early as possilbe. But personas must be based on user research.
* A part of the research phase for a product or feature, before the actual design starts.

## Guidelines for Creating Personas
* Best done as team.
* Start with identifying characteristics of users observed from user-research activities. Group these attributes into clusters to begin forming clear characters.


* Add details once distint roles emerge. But avoid adding extraneous details that do not have any implications for design.
* Omit information that would not affect the final design.

## Persona-Focused Design
* In meetings, the persona's name acts as shorthand for the full set of attributes, desires, and behaviors that need to be considered for designing. Don't use "the users" instead. It helps the team to picture the same set of users.
* The functionalities that would most benefit a persona should inform which features to implement and prioritize.
* Usually one or two personas should be the main targets for the product.

## Ongoing Benefits of Personas
* Personas can be used for other acitivities besides making design decisions:
* Describe the target audience to an outside agency or consultants.
* For expert reviews.
* Recruiting participants for usability studies
* Segmenting analytics data to evalutate the behaviors and use of real users.