User personas - best practices
How many personas?
When it comes to choosing how many personas you need to make, you’ll have to make this decision for each project individually. There is no right textbook answer. However, it’s important to try and stick to as few of them as possible. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t need more than four personas - and if you notice any similarities between two personas, this means one of them isn’t needed. If you do need more than that, your research should show it before you begin creating the actual persona characters. Remember that it’s important to capture key behaviours and emotions your core customers/users do and feel, and that same types of behaviours and emotions can be observed with multiple different types of people.
For example, you may expect that teenage girls and boys engage differently with a website, but if your research shows the same behaviour patterns, they may be covered with the same user persona. Try to always stick to the “less is more” rule.
“When it comes to deciding on the number of personas, “the less is more” rule is what you should stick to.”
What you need to cover?
User personas can be created in different ways and with different tools, however there are some aspects you always need to have in mind when you’re creating one. To start from the very basics, you need to do research. Only after you have collected data about your users can you start analyzing them. We are full of our own thoughts and misconceptions, and if you start drawing conclusions about your users coming from there, you won’t be very successful.
After you’ve completed your research, you can start analyzing your (ideal) users needs, behaviours, emotions and pain points. You have an easier task with this if you have an existing product that you’re working on, because you already have an established base of users you’ll draw data from. However, if you are making a new product, you really need to focus your research in the right direction and have some idea who your ideal users will be - and where to find them.
“You need to focus your analysis on the users behaviours, needs, emotions - and specifically - pain points”
Oftentimes, we like to begin with geographical and demographic data, but you need to be aware that this information doesn’t necessarily carry any information about our ideal users. Instead, as mentioned above, focus on what users do, how they feel and what they want to achieve from using your product.
Behaviour above the opinions
People tend to say one thing - and honestly believe that they are telling the truth - but then do another thing when put in an actual situation in question. For example, if you ask someone: “What would you do if you run into some error on this messaging website?” they might answer: “I would contact customer support”. In reality, if they are faced with such a situation, they might get more frustrated than expected, so they wouldn’t contact support - instead they would leave a website with problems and find another one that is easier to use.
This is a very common issue with user research. As a UX designer, you need to be aware of the impact of behaviours and emotions, opposed to opinions. If you have user data that shows how they previously responded to your product - use it. Do your best to include users in tests where they will be able to show you how they interact with the product, and not just tell you. Questionnaires are often the easiest and cheapest solution to any user research, but in the field of UX, they need to be used with caution.
In the same way, your user personas need to include some behaviour patterns in their descriptions, otherwise they won’t be useful for any of the goals they are aimed towards.
Visual presentation
Even while making your personas, you’ll have an easier time if you use some of the visual techniques of grouping up data. You can begin with good old post-it notes, creating categories of user behaviours in different colors. You can divide your data into small sections, such as: Bio, Personality, Motivation, Behaviour, Goals, Pains.
Relatively simple and easy method you can use in between this research and actual persona creation are the empathy maps. Put your user in the middle - and around it, make 4 sections: what the user feels, what the user thinks, what the user says and what the user does. In the end, this kind of visualisation of data will help you piece all of the valuable information in your user persona.
User personas themselves can take many different forms, however usual practice is for them to have a photograph and a name. Some designers add some of the more personal information such as hobbies, brand affiliations and skills. Whatever you want to include is fine, as long as it doesn’t take away from the main goal. And the goal is? Of course, to understand your users better, to boost empathy towards them and to build a product that will successfully answer their needs (and therefore, make your business successful as well).
