Design: Research - Prepare Personas

In the last post I spoke about bringing an Experience Design approach to the renovation of the Airstream.

In this early - Research - stage, it is very crucial to know who we are designing for.  One of the common mistakes that designers and engineers make is designing for themselves.  Another mistake is designing for everybody and yet nobody specifically.  This happens all the time in large organisations with unnecessarily overbearing or inappropriately directed stakeholder governance (oversight).  In layman's terms, this latter issue results in "design by committee".

Personas aim to obviate both these issues by focussing the designers / engineers / (or in my case) cabinet maker on the specific individuals who will be using the resultant product.

This is where it gets a little recursive because I am the main user and I am the designer - so there is absolutely a conflict.  I am very rarely designing products for myself so personas help me maintain objectivity.  You might think that writing a persona for myself is unnecessary in this case and you may be right but bear with me because I think it will be valuable in a couple of ways:
1.  It helps me be very deliberate and objective about my goals, needs and motivations,
2.  It may be helpful when briefing in contractors,
3.  It is important for you - the audience - to understand my goals etc. so that the subsequent design activities have context and can be evaluated for validity,
4.  It might help other UX designers (or trailer renovators) understand these methods better,

In describing how these things work, I'm going to draw heavily on Alan Cooper's work with personas.  He was instrumental in bringing them into modern design practice.

What are personas?
- Personas are represented as individuals - even though they usually stand for groups of users,

- Personas are based on research,

- Personas capture motivations and goals - critical as goals drive behaviour which drives tasks which are supported by features,

- Personas are distinct because they have different motivations (not just because they have different roles),

- Personas are the basis of the design - every feature / function can be viewed in the context of a persona,
- Personas are rich and tell an engaging story about somebody who will use the design.

Considering the design of our Airstream, these are the three distinct personas:
Primary Persona: Matt Morphett - User Experience Designer and Film & TV Composer
Secondary Persona: Ghita Fiorelli - Film & TV Editor and Business Administrator
Tertiary Persona: Randall Journeyman - Writer and guest staying in the Airstream for a few days

In the interests of time, I've drawn up only the primary persona (it's all about me).

As you can see it offers some context and background providing insight into my motivations but the stars of the show (beyond the pictures) are the goals and motivations.

Getting these right and designing explicitly for them is key ensuring the best outcome with any design.

The next step is to put this persona into the context of use (the Airstream) and write a scenario showing what a typical day looks like.  This will will help me plan out the features and the layout.

Thanks for watching.  Leave comments.

Let me know if you would like the persona template for your projects.