When it comes to the user persona, both product novices and product experts are more or less involved in the product design process. So, what’s a user persona? When do you need a user persona?
User Persona
The user persona can be divided into two parts: The “user,” as the name implies, is the actual user group of the products we design and the services we provide. In short, the birth of products is to serve users. Only users can design useful products. Let’s look at the “persona” again. When it comes to persona, many people involuntarily have an image in mind, whether it’s the smile of Mona Lisa or Van Gogh, persona makes the people who see it come alive. It’s easier to understand what the persona wants to convey.
In the product development process, the user of the product is embodied and visualized by the user persona, and the user of the product goes from a simple text description to a real user with “flesh and blood” so that the product team members can better understand the user of the product. During the design process, the product can be designed based on the actual user characteristics so that the final designed product doesn’t meet the needs of the actual user.
User Persona Application Scenarios
At any stage of the product lifecycle, the User Persona can vividly represent content that’s easy for product managers and product-related team members to understand. With the help of the User Persona, you can understand who the user of the product is, what they want to achieve with the product, and what they do when they use the product. Based on these three goals, the user persona is divided into three use cases:
1. Knowing who the user is
In the business requirement document creation and product design phase, it’s most important for a product manager to focus on the users, needs, and scenarios of the product. Based on these three elements, we can assess whether the product concept is viable and present the product solution to the boss.
The user persona contains elements:
- Basic attributes such as photos, name, age, profession, hobbies, and other personal characteristics related to your product
- Needs: What needs do users currently have to satisfy?
- User stories: A user story describes the situations in which users will use the product.
Data sources:
Some newcomers may wonder where the information in the user profile comes from. Do you compile them yourself, are they no different from the actual user?
There are several ways to collect user information:
- Analyze and obtain information about product users and user needs through industry analysis reports, and create a user persona by integrating the information you collect.
- Gather user information and needs through user interviews and questionnaires, and create a user persona based on the results of interviews and questionnaires.
Example: user persona of takeout products
2. What the users want to achieve with the product
In the product design phase, the product manager needs to present the product design and product development ideas to the product development team, interaction design team, and visual design team. In order for the design and development team to understand the ideas you want to express and the actual needs of the users, they need a user persona to help them do this. Typically, product requirements documents and prototype diagrams are the main components that are supplemented by user personas so that design and development team members can get a better visual understanding of the product’s target users during the design process.
The user persona contains elements:
- Basic attributes, such as photos, name, age, profession, hobbies, and other personal attributes related to your product.
- Usage scenarios that enable the design and R&D team to shape product performance and user experience by clarifying whether the product will be used on the mobile device or on the PC device and under what circumstances
- User stories describe user tasks and the product usage path as users complete the tasks.
Data Sources:
During the product design phase, user needs and user usage scenarios were clarified. One way to describe user stories is to conduct interviews and questionnaires with users; another way is to invite target users to simulate the use of product prototypes. Through the user testing method, we can understand users’ usage and behavior, and design products that better match users’ habits.
Example: about the female e-commerce product user
3. What do users do when they use the product?
Understanding user behavior can also be called user research. The content of user research is relatively extensive, such as user data mining analysis, user churn behavior analysis, user recommendation and so on. Depending on the purpose, you can create different types of user personas.
Usually, the user persona is created at this stage after the product has been in use for a while. The hope is that a specific study and analysis of a particular user behavior from a specific aspect will be conducted and a solution or recommendation plan for that type of user will be proposed.
The user persona contains elements:
- Basic attributes, such as photos, name, age, occupation, hobbies, and other personal attributes related to your product
- User behavior, the behavior or characteristics of users who use the product; find the type of users you want to find by looking for commonalities
- User stories: Use user stories to find groups of users who share the same usage habits.
Data sources:
At this stage, the source of user behavior is determined by analyzing data collected in the backend of the product, and then user behavior characteristics are entered into the backend database to obtain specific data of a user type.
Example: user recommendation for international roaming service
Abstract
- User personas represent not only a specific user, but a class of users with the same characteristics.
- The purpose of User Persona is to provide clarity to other team members about the user’s characteristics and behavioral habits, and to provide a helpful reference for product design and research and development.
- For creating a user persona for the purpose of user research, the purpose should be clearly defined in the early stage of creation, and relevant user information should be collected according to the purpose. After the user persona is created, it is necessary to discover this kind of user group based on the user persona and propose specific plans to serve this kind of group.
- User Persona application scenarios are not limited to these three categories. These are only three commonly used scenarios, and specific problems need to be analyzed in detail.