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User Persona

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What Is a persona?

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. A persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products, customer service preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design. Behaviors, attitudes, and motivations are common to a “type” regardless of age, gender, education, and other typical demographics. In fact, personas vastly span demographics.

Whether the final product is a website, software application, mobile app, or interactive kiosk, a user-centered design can only be achieved if we know who is going to use it and if that knowledge informs our design. An entire arsenal of user-research methods can be employed to achieve a user-centered design.

The classification of persona

Personas can be classified into 2 types in general: Marketing Persona and Design Persona.

  1. Marketing Personas are typical characters of the customers of a product or a company, they have similarities in buying preference, social relations, mode of consumption and ages. Personas help the company determine how their customers will be;
  2. Design Personas (For example the User Personas and the UX Personas) refer to the representatives of users of a product or service that have similar points in usage customs, product requirements, preferences and goals. They can describe the needs of potential users and help developers put their focus back on users during the function design, and make products conform to user requirements.

What is an agile persona?

A persona, first introduced by Alan Cooper, defines an archetypical user of a system, an example of the kind of person who would interact with it. In other words, personas represent fictitious people which are based on your knowledge of real users.

What is a customer persona?

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.

Why do you need a persona?

Understanding the needs of your users is vital to developing a successful product. Well-defined personas will enable you to efficiently identify and communicate user needs. Whether you’re developing a smartphone app or a mobile-responsive website, it’s very important to understand who will be using the product. Knowing your audience will help influence the features and design elements you choose, thus making your product more useful. A persona will also help you describe the individuals who use your product, which is essential to your overall value proposition and clarifies who is in your target audience by answering the following questions:

  • Who is my ideal customer?
  • What are the current behavior patterns of my users?
  • What are the needs and goals of my users?

How do you define a user persona?

A well-defined user persona contains four key pieces of information:

  • Header
  • Demographic Profile
  • End Goal(s)
  • Scenario

Common pieces of information to include are:

  • Name, age, gender, and a photo
  • Tag line describing what they do in “real life”; avoid getting too witty, as doing so may taint the persona as being too fun and not a useful tool
  • Experience level in the area of your product or service
  • Context for how they would interact with your product: Through choice or required by their job? How often would they use it? Do they typically use a desktop computer to access it, or their phone or other device?
  • Goals and concerns when they perform relevant tasks: speed, accuracy, thoroughness, or any other needs that may factor into their usage
  • Quotes to sum up the persona’s attitude

Benefits of personas

Personas help to focus decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation. They also offer a quick and inexpensive way to test and prioritize those features throughout the development process. In addition they can help:

  • Stakeholders and leaders evaluate new site feature ideas
  • Information architects develop informed wireframes, interface behaviors, and labeling
  • Designers create the overall look and feel of the website
  • System engineers/developers decide which approaches to take based on user behaviors
  • Copy writers ensure site content is written to the appropriate audiences

Four different perspectives on personas

In her Interaction Design Foundation encyclopedia article, Personas, Ph.D and specialist in personas, Lene Nielsen, describes four perspectives that your personas can take to ensure that they add the most value to your design project and the fiction-based perspective. Let’s take a look at each of them:

1. Goal-directed Personas

The objective of a goal-directed persona is to examine the process and workflow that your user would prefer to utilise in order to achieve their objectives in interacting with your product or service. The goal-directed personas are based upon the perspectives of Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer who is widely recognized as the “Father of Visual Basic”.

Author/Copyright holder: Smashing Magazine. Copyright terms and licence: All rights reserved. Img Source

2. Role-Based Personas

The role-based perspective is also goal-directed and it also focusses on behaviour. The personas of the role-based perspectives are massively data-driven and incorporate data from both qualitative and quantitative sources. An examination of the roles that our users typically play in real life can help inform better product design decisions. Where will the product be used? What’s this role’s purpose? What business objectives are required of this role? Who else is impacted by the duties of this role? What functions are served by this role? Jonathan Grudin, John Pruitt, and Tamara Adlin are advocates for the role-based perspective.

3. Engaging Personas

“The engaging perspective is rooted in the ability of stories to produce involvement and insight. Through an understanding of characters and stories, it is possible to create a vivid and realistic description of fictitious people. The purpose of the engaging perspective is to move from designers seeing the user as a stereotype with whom they are unable to identify and whose life they cannot envision, to designers actively involving themselves in the lives of the personas. The other persona perspectives are criticized for causing a risk of stereotypical descriptions by not looking at the whole person, but instead focusing only on behavior.”
– Lene Nielsen

Engaging personas can incorporate both goal and role-directed personas, as well as the more traditional rounded personas. These engaging personas are designed so that the designers who use them can become more engaged with them. The idea is to create a 3D rendering of a user through the use of personas. These personas examine the emotions of the user, their psychology, backgrounds and make them relevant to the task in hand. The perspective emphasises how stories can engage and bring the personas to life. One of the advocates for this perspective is Lene Nielsen.

Author/Copyright holder: Terri Phillips. Copyright terms and licence: All rights reserved. Img Source

4. Fictional Personas

The fictional persona does not emerge from user research (unlike the other personas) but it emerges from the experience of the UX design team. It requires the team to make assumptions based upon past interactions with the user base, and products to deliver a picture of what, perhaps, typical users look like.

Where can you get excellent user persona template?

Some online medium for creating persona.

1) McorpCX Persona

McorpCX Persona provides a way to better understand the customers you serve. It has 15-year industry-leading customer experience practices based on personas.

2) Xtensio

It’s an online user persona template covers 6 of the 7 Persona topics. Xtensio helps you come up with your ideal user “types.”

3) Hubspot

Hubspot covers all of the Persona topics but ‘Customer media & device preference and Biography’. It introduces the concept of what is Negative Personas.

4) Akoonu

Akoonu provides good motivation to start a company and help marketers understand their buyers better. Moreover, it helps sales figure out if a buyer is going to buy.

5) Inflow

There are lots of template out there for content gap analysis, many of which take into account personas and each stage of their buying cycle.

6) UserForge

This user persona template helps you start prioritizing design decisions and get to the wins sooner.

7) Content Harmony

It’s a free user persona template is easy to understand and gives you a compact, two-page snapshot of what a typical customer might look like.

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Designer | Ideator | Thinker | Love Reading, Writing | Wildlife | Passionate about Learning New Stuff & Technologies. Feel free to comment below. Keep on visiting the blog for new articles. For suggestions and questions if you have any, then you can visit this link. (Disclaimer : My views are entirely my own and have nothing to do with any organisation)

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Design

Haptic technology its potential to enhance user experience

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Haptic technology refers to technology that provides tactile feedback to users, allowing them to interact with digital devices and environments in a more immersive and intuitive way. Haptic technology is based on the sense of touch and uses vibration, pressure, or other physical stimuli to convey information and sensations to the user. This can range from simple vibrations in response to touch input on a smartphone screen to complex, multidimensional haptic feedback in virtual reality or gaming applications. 

The goal of haptic technology is to create a more natural and intuitive interaction between people and technology, allowing users to “feel” the digital world in a way that mimics the physical world. Haptic technology is used in a variety of devices and applications, including smartphones, game controllers, wearable devices, and medical devices, among others. In virtual reality and augmented reality applications, haptic technology can be used to simulate the feeling of touching virtual objects and environments, making the experience more immersive and believable. 

Here's What the Future of Haptic Technology Looks (Or Rather, Feels) Like | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine

Haptic technology is still an emerging field, and there is ongoing research and development aimed at improving the accuracy, versatility, and durability of haptic devices. As technology continues to advance, it is likely that haptic technology will become increasingly integrated into a wide range of devices and applications. 

Haptic technology has the potential to significantly impact various industries and immersive experiences. Some of the ways in which haptic technology is being used or has the potential to be used include: 

  • Gaming and Virtual Reality: Haptic technology can enhance the realism of gaming and virtual reality experiences by allowing players to feel the impact of explosions, collisions, and other events in real-time. 
  • Smartphones and Wearables: Haptic technology is commonly used in smartphones and wearables to provide tactile feedback for touch inputs, such as tapping or scrolling. This enhances the overall user experience and makes it easier for people to use these devices. 
  • Healthcare: Haptic technology is being used in the healthcare industry for rehabilitation and prosthetics, allowing patients to experience touch sensations in a controlled and precise manner. 
  • Automotive: Haptic technology is being used in the automotive industry to enhance the driving experience. For example, haptic feedback can be used to alert drivers to safety warnings, such as lane departure warnings, or to provide a more immersive experience when using in-car entertainment systems. 
  • Manufacturing: Haptic technology is being used in the manufacturing industry to provide workers with information and feedback in real-time, allowing them to work more efficiently and safely. 

The use of haptic technology has the potential to greatly enhance the user experience in a wide range of industries and immersive experiences, making interactions with digital devices and environments more intuitive, engaging, and realistic. 

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Design

Trends of UX 2023

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User experience (UX) is a rapidly evolving field that is constantly influenced by new technologies and trends. As we move into 2023, there are a number of key trends that are expected to shape the field of UX. The field of user experience (UX) is constantly evolving, and new trends and technologies are emerging all the time. Here are a few trends that are expected to be prevalent in 2023: 

  • Emphasis on Empathy: With the increasing awareness of mental health and well-being, there is a growing emphasis on designing products and services that take into account the emotional needs of users. This includes designing for empathy, which involves understanding and addressing the emotional needs of users. This is achieved by conducting user research and testing, using tools like user interviews and surveys, and observing users’ behavior and emotions as they interact with a product or service. 
  • Human-centered design: The shift in focus towards human-centered design, which puts users at the center of the design process, will continue to be a prominent trend in 2023. This approach puts users at the center of the design process, and allows designers to create products and services that better meet the needs and goals of users. Human-centered design is achieved by conducting user research, testing, and validation to understand users’ needs, goals and pain points, and using this information to design the product or service. This approach allows designers to create products and services that better meet the needs and goals of users. 
  • Voice-based interfaces: With the increasing popularity of voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home, voice-based interfaces are becoming an increasingly important aspect of UX. Voice-based interfaces are also expected to become increasingly important in 2023. Voice-based interfaces are expected to be used in more products and services as a means of interaction, and designers will need to consider how to design voice-based interfaces that are intuitive, easy-to-use, and accessible to all users. 
  • Personalization and customization: With the rise of big data and artificial intelligence, it’s becoming increasingly possible to personalize and customize products and services to meet the needs of individual users. In 2023, we can expect to see more products and services that are tailored to the unique needs and preferences of users. With the rise of big data and artificial intelligence, it’s becoming increasingly possible to personalize and customize products and services to meet the needs of individual users. Designers will need to consider how to use data and AI to create personalized experiences that meet the unique needs and preferences of users. 
  • Micro-interactions: Micro-interactions, such as subtle animations and sound effects, are becoming increasingly important in creating a more engaging and satisfying user experience. In 2023, we can expect to see more products and services incorporating micro-interactions to enhance the overall user experience. Micro-interactions, such as subtle animations and sound effects, are also becoming increasingly important in creating a more engaging and satisfying user experience. In 2023, designers will need to consider how to use micro-interactions to enhance the overall user experience. 
  • Privacy and security: Finally, privacy and security are becoming increasingly important as users become more concerned about how their personal information is being used and protected. With the increasing concern about data privacy and security, it’s becoming increasingly important for designers to consider how products and services protect the personal information of users and how to communicate this to users in a clear and transparent way.  

The field of UX is constantly evolving and designers need to keep abreast of the latest trends and technologies to create products and services that meet the needs and goals of users. By understanding and addressing the emotional needs of users, and by using human-centered design, voice-based interfaces, personalization, micro-interactions and privacy and security, designers can create products and services that provide a positive and efficient user.

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Technology

Driving the development of NLP

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Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence (AI) that is having a significant impact on various industries, including healthcare, technology, and lifestyle and there are some key technologies and techniques that are driving the development of NLP and are being applied in real-world applications. 

One of the key technologies driving the development of NLP is deep learning. Deep learning algorithms, such as recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and transformer models, are being used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of NLP tasks, such as language translation, sentiment analysis, and text summarization. For example, RNNs and transformer models can be used to analyze large amounts of text data and identify patterns and trends that can assist in diagnoses and treatment planning in healthcare. Additionally, transformer models such as BERT and GPT-3 are used to improve the performance of virtual assistants and customer service chatbots. 

Another important technology driving the development of NLP is the use of large-scale pre-trained models. Pre-trained models, such as BERT, GPT-3, and T5, have been trained on large amounts of text data and can be fine-tuned for specific NLP tasks, such as question answering and text classification. These pre-trained models have significantly improved the performance of NLP tasks and have made it easier for developers to build and deploy NLP applications. Deep learning and pre-trained models, other key technologies and techniques that are driving the development of NLP include:

  • Named Entity Recognition (NER): used to identify and classify named entities, such as people, organizations, and locations, in text data. 
  • Part-of-Speech Tagging (POS): used to identify and classify the parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, in text data. 
  • Sentiment Analysis: used to determine the emotional tone of text data, such as whether a piece of text is positive, negative, or neutral. 
  • Text Summarization: used to generate a condensed version of text data, such as a summary of a news article or a summary of customer feedback. 

As the field of NLP continues to evolve, it will likely play an increasingly important role in shaping the way we live, work, and interact with technology. NLP is a rapidly growing field of AI that is having a significant impact on various industries, including healthcare, technology, and lifestyle. Key technologies and techniques, such as deep learning, pre-trained models, and NER, POS and Sentiment Analysis are driving the development of NLP and are being applied in real-world applications to improve efficiency, accuracy, and communication.

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