A fantastical series

Lessons on Design Deliverables

Part 1: User Personas

Copyright: Timur Arbaev

The beginning

Welcome! I wanted to write an article series that speaks mainly to design students about UX deliverables and how, when I was a student, my teams and I always struggled to feel comfortable with what was necessary when creating them. We often encountered conflicting information concerning proper formats and elements necessary to do them correctly. It was pretty annoying, and it caused us to take a lot more time to create them than was necessary. So, if you are a student, or just trying to learn a little more about UX practices, I offer this opportunity to learn from my struggles. Hopefully what I discuss today can save you some confusion and time.

Over the course of this series, I am going to speak about 4 common UX deliverables and some mistakes/misconceptions about what they are and how they can help.

The four lucky winners are:

1. User Personas
2. Competitive analysis
3. User Journey Maps
4. Wireframes

Today we will just tackle user personas, there’s definitely enough to talk about there.

But first, what are UX deliverables?

UX deliverables are, according to Nielsen Norman Group “documents that serve as a record of work that has occurred”. The definition is intentionally vague, but accurate nonetheless. In the UX Design world, deliverables come in a few forms such as user personas, competitive analyses, customer journey maps, wireframes, prototypes, and site maps just to name a few. These types of deliverables serve mainly two purposes:

1. Consolidating user insights to build a higher level of empathy and understanding of the target audience and their needs
2. Acting as a basis for communicating product concepts and goals

These deliverables are shared amongst the teams working on the product as well as the stakeholders. They help to keep the project well documented and on track, and are highly necessary to the success of any design project. They should not be taken lightly.

So, now that the groundwork has been somewhat laid out, I think it’s time to get started!

User personas

So much for “not taking it lightly”

What is a user persona?

A user persona is a fictional character that represents your target user, and I’m sorry-not-sorry if my persona above is your first encounter with one (please don’t take it too seriously).

They are created to summarize both quantitative and qualitative data, often incorporating age, salary, location, lifestyle, and the all-important pain points. Their value lies in the fact that they humanize data, with the idea that it is easier for a designer and stakeholders to empathize with their user and allows a better assessment of what their users need.

Warning: Good examples on the web are few and far between

User personas are a generally simple concept to understand. However, if you look for examples online, you’ll see a myriad of different kinds with varying attributes and styles. Some are beautiful, some are bare bones, some show personality types/astrological signs, and some use either illustrations or actual photos to represent the user. As students, this incongruous assortment was what we ran into when trying to find different examples of personas outside of our classrooms. It became difficult to understand what would be the most effective way to create them (we were worried about grades, too). So, we came up with really robust personas like this:

We got caught up in trying to strike a balance between attractiveness and purpose. The result became just too much information, a lot of which was not totally relevant.

However, as I’ve ventured out of the design program and further into the world of UX, I’ve learned a bit more about what is truly necessary.

As a caveat, project types and goals always vary and therefore some personas may benefit from additional information. However, here are the key things to keep in mind that I believe are the most important aspects of a user persona:

Key persona needs

1. A realistic photo

• The reason? Illustrations detract from reality, which is antithetical to the purpose of personas.

2. Goals/motivations and frustrations

• Showing what the users want to do is critical, showing what prevents them from doing so is even more critical.

3. A very brief biography to gain some empathy traction

• Don’t use this to summarize your goals and frustrations. Build a little more here and give the persona a life.
• A single, poignant quote can add a lot of personality

4. A concise and scannable format (bullet points, yo)

It’s important to make persona information digestible for a number of reasons, for example:

• It’s easier on you- you will be referring to your persona throughout the design process. You probably don’t want to dig through dense paragraphs of words, even if you wrote them.
• It’s easier on everyone else- stakeholders, teammates, and others involved in your project also don’t want to have to read closely to understand who the user is.

5. The most important one of all: RELEVANT information

1. Leave off personality types- I’m telling you right now, including a personality type or astrological sign is completely unnecessary. A persona is empirical enough, no need to stretch it.
2. Include cohesive information- Don’t put in features or metrics that have no relation to the others. Make the persona cohesive, it will save you in the long run from trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

Example time!

Let’s start off by looking at some examples that lack what makes user personas effective, and then we’ll end with one good example. Sound nice? Yeah. Yeah it does.

Example 1: Anne

Study this first example for a moment and think about where it goes a little wrong:

Source: Dribbble

Okay so I noticed 2 glaring problems right away:

1. First of all, this is a very incomplete persona. It doesn’t even have pain points or frustrations listed. It’s simply too bare.
2. Secondly, there are so many different goals that don’t necessarily align with each other. How does keeping fit, traveling the world, making friends, and becoming a scientist correlate? As a designer, am I meant to help her achieve all of these things? The design team would need unlimited resources to do that.

Takeaway Lesson: Be sure to include cohesive, related information as well as the persona’s pain points.

Example 2: Lucas

Now, I like the styling of this one, but it still has its faults. Take a look and see where this one falls a bit short

Source: Dribbble

I see another 2 issues:

1. Dense paragraphs. The small words and tight spacing make this difficult to read.
2. Charts that explain levels of behavior don’t usually do the best job because (as counterintuitive as it seems) it causes people to have to think a bit more, rather than simply read short sentences.

Takeaway Lesson: Use a concise, scannable format.

Example 3: Emily

This is a fairly robust persona, and I really like that they included the “How can we help” section, buuuuut..

Source: Dribbble

The issues with this one:

1. Firstly, the information hierarchy in this persona is all over the place. My eye darts from section to section without knowing where it’s going to go next.
2. Secondly, they include a personality section which really doesn’t need to be there in order for one to get a sense of who they are.
3. And lastly, I know I said I liked it, but if you’re going to include the solutions to your user’s persona card then at least give it some emphasis to prevent that from blending in. Frankly, I would just leave the solutions off and keep only what builds the persona into a real person.

Takeaway Lesson: Have a clear format and include only relevant information.

Finally, a good example!

Here is an example of a user persona that I think is concise, clear, easily digestible, and relatable:

The reasons I like this one:

1. It simply is enough. It tells an easy, relatable story
2. The photo is realistic and captures the persona in her element.
3. Lastly, her biography section (including the quote) gives plenty of personality while remaining perfectly short.

To be clear, I am not saying this is THE format to follow. You are welcome to be creative in how the info is organized (as long as it is organized). I’m saying that the seemingly small amount of information on Maria’s persona is enough to tell a relatable story, which in turn makes empathy easier. Moreover, there’s no information that is unneeded, and the graphic is easily scannable.

Wrapping up

So, remember, there are 5 key things to keep in mind when creating user personas:

1. A realistic photo
2. Goals/motivations and frustrations
3. A very brief biography to gain some empathy traction
4. Concise and scannable format
5. Relevant information

Ideally, these 5 things are meant to keep you from going overboard with creating a robust, but ultimately difficult to use persona. Stick to being concise, include only necessary info, and be sure that they tell a cohesive story. You want your persona to feel real without an overwhelming amount of content.

Thank you!

Thanks for reading! This article was written based on experience, research, and insights I’ve gained throughout my UX journey. Please feel open to discussing any thoughts, questions, or conflicts that you may have and I’d be happy to hear it!

I encourage you to add me on LinkedIn, just be sure to say hi let me know where you’re from!

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samueljaklich/

See you in Part 2 :)