Persona

**Personas**
Personas are a method of engagement of reality for designers to use in certain scenarios. These scenarios mimic interactivity between the users and interface. This allows for research and data to be collected to better the design.

Personas are fictional characters constructed by designers. These personas have, names, likes/dislikes, clothes, families, goals, as well as a gender, educational and social status.(StepTwo Designs) Personas allow designers to look at how effective their design is with the personas level of engagement. Personas are mostly used for user-interface designs/web design. The idea of personas is that “they” reflect a specific target market and the personas actions within the design will help designers realize how a specific target market navigates.(Grudin and Pruitt) In Jonathan Grudin and John Pruitt’s report Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development : An Infrastructure for Engagement they state that personas should collect as much qualitative and quantitative data from users. Also those personas should create a powerful focus on user and work contexts through fictionalized settings. Grudin and Pruitt also argue “Personas utilize our minds powerful ability to extrapolate from partial knowledge of people to create coherent wholes and projects.” “Personas are a medium for communication” they are constructed from market research, ethnographies and observations.(Grudin and Pruitt) Personas are a focused fictional person of a specific target market. Persona helps designers, realize the many different users, and because of this designers can decided whether or not their user-interfacedesign should be designing for everyone or for one specific target market.

**Types of Personas**

 * Primary**: These are the main users, the product's/website's target market.
 * Secondary**: They also use the product/view the website but their needs can be sacrificed to meet the needs of primary users.
 * Unimportant**: Infrequent, unauthorized, or otherwise low-priority users.
 * Affected**: They don’t use the product but are affected by it. For example, one member of the family may do the research when buying a car, but the others—who are usually involved in the decision—will be affected by that person’s work.
 * Exclusionary**: They have no involvement with the product/website. Period.

Examples
This is an example developped by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) GATEKEEPERS** || //Program Staff Director, USDA// > Internet user, with a T1 connection at work and > dial-up at home > hours a day for his work || Matthew spends most of his time at work requesting and reviewing research reports, preparing memos and briefs for agency heads, and supervising staff efforts in food safety and inspection. || **Key Attributes** > output of program under direction ||
 * **USDA SENIOR MANAGER
 * [[image:http://www.usability.gov/images/personapic.jpg width="123" height="166" caption="picture of Matthew Johnson, subject of sample persona"]] || **Matthew Johnson**
 * 51-years-old
 * Married, 3 children, 1 grandchild
 * Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics
 * Comfortable using a computer, intermediate
 * Uses email extensively; uses the web about 1.5
 * **//"Can you get me that staff analysis by Tuesday?"//**
 * **//"Can you get me that staff analysis by Tuesday?"//**
 * Focused, goal-oriented
 * Strong leadership role
 * Concerned about maintaining quality across all

**Related Links:**
http://research.microsoft.com/research/coet/Grudin/Personas/Grudin-Pruitt.pdf http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/ http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/making_personas_more_powerful_details_to_drive_strategic_and_tactical_design

**Bibliography:**
Grudin, Jonathan, and John Pruitt. Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development: an Infrastructure for Engagement. Microsoft. 1-8. 10 Jan. 2008 <[|http://research.microsoft.com/research/coet/Grudin/Personas/Grudin-Pruitt.pdf>.]

"KM Column." An Introduction to Personas. 2005. Steptwo Designs. 10 Jan. 2008 <[|http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/>.]

Olsen, George. "Making Personas More Powerful: Details to Drive Strategic and Tactical Design." Boxes and Arrows. 14 Sept 2004. 10 Feb 2008. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/making_personas_more_powerful_details_to_drive_strategic_and_tactical_design.

"Usability.Gov." Personas. 10 Jan. 2008 .