Personas

In the scientific world there are models created to better understand the behaviors. From mathematical models to understand the physical world, to economic models to understand financial markets.

These models facilitate the visualization of patterns that are often related to complex relationships.
In interaction design these models are called personas.

Personas (concept created by Alan Cooper) are models based on behaviors and motivations of real people that were generated after the research phase, where data from various methods, such as ethnographic interviews, were properly treated, thus verifying the existence of patterns between them.

As with all models, the quality of the data obtained will dictate the quality of the model and its ease of understanding.

Personas improve the understanding of how users think, how they behave, what they want to accomplish and why, but they are not real people, only based on the data obtained.

Personas should be primarily based on the target audience and later organized by their level of importance.

“To create a product that must satisfy a diverse audience of users, logic might tell you to make it as broad in its functionality as possible to accommodate the most people. This logic, however is flawed. The best way to successfully accommodate a variety of users is to design for specific types of individuals with specific needs. When you broadly and arbitrarily extend a product’s functionality to include many constituencies you increase the cognitive load and navigational overhead for all users.”
Cooper & Reimann & Cronin

According to the authors of About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design, personas help designers to:

- Determine what a product should do and how
- Helps to communicate with the different development teams
- Creates consensus and commitment about design
- Allows you to measure how efficient the design is

During the process of creating personas it is necessary to have empathy to try to understand people as much as possible, as these decisions will be reflected in the design to solve people's goals (persona's goals).

Although personas are different individuals (not real, just illustrative), what they actually represent are different types of users or classes that will interact with the product. They are individual models that represent groups.

As they are based on specific contexts and products, their use is restricted to these and cannot be 'recycled' to other different projects, as they lose their functionality and importance.

It is very important to understand people's motivations and turn them into goals; it will be these goals that will dictate the course of the evolution of the system design, as well as understand why some behaviors exist.

“Understanding why a user performs certain tasks gives designers great power to improve or even eliminate those tasks yet still accomplish the same goals.”
Cooper & Reimann & Cronin

There are similar concepts, some that actually use the same terminology, but when applied in different areas, they have different meanings. In this specific case, the personas, when based on the marketing (commercial) side, their data is related to purchasing and demographic behaviors, while in the interaction design side the data are based on the analysis of behaviors and motivations. They generate different results as they are two different processes.

“Marketing personas shed light on the sales process, whereas design personas shed light on the product definition and development process.”
Cooper & Reimann & Cronin

When there is no time or other resources to rigorously elaborate the personas, the best alternative is to create temporary ones (“ad hoc personas”, as Don Norman puts it) based on qualitative data obtained and on the designers' hunches about people's behaviors and motivations. with that product.

You need to be extra careful as they can focus on the wrong group of people. Of course the results will never be the same, but personas play such an important role in development that it is preferable to have ones that are temporary but less credible than to have none at all.

How to construct personas

The goal of the entire process is to build useful and credible personas.

Here are the most important phases:
- Identify behavioral variables
- Map the interview themes with behavioral variables
- Identify significant behavior patterns
- Synthesize relevant features and objectives
- Expand the description of attributes and behaviors
- Check redundancies
- Designate the type of persona

To make the design as efficient as possible, the goals must be directly related to the product and the personal goals.

In the construction of personas it is necessary to bear in mind that there cannot be very similar personas, each persona has to have significantly different behaviors from each other. There can be no generalist or overly specific personas.

Each persona is accompanied by a narrative and a photograph that make it more credible and improve understanding. The photographs only serve to increase the credibility of the facts, however it is necessary to be careful when choosing one, as they can convey sensations and environmental information that suit the persona's attitude.

As personas represent different groups and a product is mostly targeted to a specific group, it is necessary to determine and prioritize the personas.

According to method from the book^[1], there are six different types of personas:
- Primary
- Secondary
- Supplementary
- Customer
- Served
- Negative

Primary personas

They represent the main focus of the audience. There can only be one primary persona per product interface, although some products have multiple interfaces that are linked to different primary personas.

The way to obtain a primary persona is by comparing the goals of each persona with the other. If there is a difficulty in choosing the primary persona, it could mean that the product either has multiple interfaces or is too complex.

While a primary persona will not be satisfied with a design aimed at another type of persona, the other personas at least will not be unhappy if it is aimed at the primary persona.

“If a consumer product has multiple primary personas, the scope of the product may be too broad.”
Cooper & Reimann & Cronin

Secondary personas

The secondary personas are mostly satisfied with the interfaces that were developed with the primary personas in mind, however, they added new tools to help them with other needs. They do not always exist and if they do exist in a large number it could mean that the product is too complex or comprehensive.

The product must first have in mind the primary personas. Over time it can add some details that contribute to improving the interaction with the secondary personas.

Supplementary personas

These are the personas that are neither primary nor secondary, but that still contribute to the interaction. There can be several associated with an interface.

Customer personas

They are usually treated as secondary personas, but they keep in mind the needs of a consumer and non-user.

Served personas

They do not use the product, however they are directly affected by its use.

Negative personas

They are personas who transmit profiles contrary to those that should be taken into account, thus eliminating doubts that exist among the teams in charge of development.