Personas

What are personas?

Personas are fictional user profiles. They let you get a clear picture of what the app or software should do and how it should function. These imaginary people descriptions should stay at the back of your mind as you design the user experience and the testing.

It's highly recommended to perform basic user research by talking to real people in your life (friends, family, classmates) and combining your discoveries into personas.

Conduct user research: Who are your users and why are they using the system? What behaviors, assumptions, and expectations color their view of the system?

Condense the research: Look for themes/characteristics that are specific, relevant, and universal to the system and its users.

Brainstorm: Organize elements into persona groups that represent your target users. Name or classify each group.

Refine: Combine and prioritize the rough personas. Separate them into primary, secondary, and, if necessary, complementary categories.

Make them realistic: Develop the appropriate descriptions of each personas background, motivations, and expectations. Do not include a lot of personal information. Be relevant and serious; humor is not appropriate.

— Usability.gov, "Personas"

What goes into a persona?

Personas are personal UX tools and companies may have different priorities when designing them. A persona might contain:

• Name, or name with trait (such as Commuter Carl or Visitor Veronica) that relates to their role in your audience
• Age or generation
• Title or occupation
• Photo or avatar
• Short bio or description
• The persona's wants/needs and frustrations as they apply to the problem your app is solving
• Information on their personality: traits, motivations, favorite brands, etc.

However, those are by no means the "required" fields. Aim for enough insight to empathize with your personas and understand their motivations and fears in order to create an app that solves their needs.

How do you make a persona?

As with many things in UI/UX, the tools are flexible. You can design personas in the program of your choice, though there are some tools specifically tailored for personas.

Online Services & Generators

• Figma Templates

• Xtensio tutorial

• Mockplus: Has links to many persona services online

Persona Images

You can use others sites too! These are only recommended sources.

• Diverse UI

• This Person Does Not Exist: AI-generated people, with a new face on every page load

• Generated.Photos: more fake people

• Draftbit: illustrative avatar builder

• Unsplash: General free-to-use imagery

Examples

This persona is designed for a fake app called "Pixafood", an Instagram-like service for foodies. Users can post photos, tag restaurants and dishes, and discover recommended places. Restaurants benefit by having their dishes featured and recommended; they can reach out to Pixafood users to use their photos on social media.

As a mobile-only app, the example does not contain a section for the persona's platform (mobile, desktop). Some sections, such as the sliders, use values specifically related to the app concept. The bio does not go into a full "life story" but captures the formative details of the user as they relate to the app.

Other sections such as the persona's favorite apps give an insight into how this user interacts with their device: high tech literacy, trendy apps, and accustomed to other social sharing platforms.

Additional Examples

Designing for just one user's needs isn't enough! Additional personas were created for the app as well to be better representative of the app's user base.

Template files

These examples were created by Stephy Miehle using a modified version of UX Persona Template on Figma.

Credits

Xtensio Version

These examples were previously designed via Xtensio. In this formal example, a chart and short summary of the app are included before the personas. The chart showcases the approximate percentages of each type of user.