Introduction to Creating a Persona:
In the first place one little but one important definition of Personas is a group of personalities. In other words, is a fictional user whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. I consider it one of the best parts of the planning project. Knowing our users are the key to a remarque project. I will connect many projects on this platform to give more sequential knowledge, we will see a real project in the end.
We are planning and executing an entire UX project until the application. For this case, where we planning a medical application it will use by Dr. in the hospital, most specifically in care units.
But first, let’s summarize the plan for creating the application, the identified requirements. Let’s see how our user group Persona works and recognizes it.
1. Why create a Persona for your products or service
a. The first reason to create a Persona
As mentioned above, one of the first reasons is to discover user behavior patterns that may indicate a common problem faced by a group of users.
Although personas are fictional, they are not created from scratch, but are based on research that forms a persona in your head. We need to find out which usergroup is represented by Persona.
For our example, imagine a projection of a medical intervention application in a hospital.
To lay the groundwork for persona creation, a survey is conducted to uncover concerns of medical professionals in conveying details of treatment to their patients during their stay in an inpatient unit.
It was also observed that physicians complain twice as often as other professionals in the sector of not having time to perform this task satisfactorily. The factors pointed out in the research are the bureaucracy and the difficulty of access to patient data in various forms (multidisciplinary protocols) within the medical record.
Based on this, your user group should be that of physicians in medium- and long-term inpatient care units. A user group is a collection of people who have similar interests, goals, or concerns. Now the group is identified and consolidated.
b. Let’s create a persona to represent them.
This is Dr. Margarette Dupuis, a cardiologist at Montreal’s Cardiaque Hospital.
We start by including the photo and a short biographical sketch of the Persona.
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- We will insert aspects such as age, profession, hometown, marital status and any other demographic data that can give us a better view of who our user group is. So imagine that Margarette is 35 years old, has a medical degree, and lives in Montreal-Quebec, with her husband and her daughter.
After the biographical sketch, we have a little of the professional goals and everyday tasks of the Persona.
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- Let’s identify the professional profile of Dr. Margarette. Specialized in cardiology precisely in the clinical treatment of post-surgical cardiac patients.
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- Your daily routine at work, your goals, frustrations, preferred forms of communication and professional motivation.
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- Another important aspect is to understand the personality of this group and its professional goals;
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- Understand the motivation and frustration of these professionals so that they move them to achieve this goal or what blocks them from accomplishing it.
The layout for a Persona is very important, then, for example, use the good tools xtensio.
Next, we can our two personas and your characteristics.
Profile persona Dr. Magarette about this paraphrase, and below Dr. Marcus Persona.
After that, since you’re designing an app, you might want to know if Dr. Margarette feels comfortable surfing the applications and working with technology.
Let’s say that she is not very tech-savvy, but knows that she needs to have fast and efficient access in a mobile way, that is, in the care sector, in the patient’s bed or in multidisciplinary team meetings.
Finally, maybe you want her to have a catchphrase, something she often says to inspire herself and her little team every day.
For Dr. Magarette it could be something like “Do the best medicine is be face to face with patients”. In the blink of an eye, your user group turns into a real person, based on which the team can develop the app.
Remember that each persona you create humanizes a group of users for your team.
By now, you’re probably asking yourself: Is it worth creating so many characters? The simple answer is: “Of course.”
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- Personas create empathy and give a face to the user.
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- They help humanize our users.
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- They allow stakeholders to have a clear idea of who their users really are and make the user experience more meaningful.
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- In addition, personas tell stories. That’s why personas are key to turning a common stakeholder presentation into a storytelling experience.
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- It makes you feel something that statistics can’t. She looks like a real person. You want to help her keep doing what she loves. That’s the power of personas.
2. Second Reason to create a persona.
The second reason, Margarette (Persona) will help convince the creation of features to access users’ data on time.
As much as Magaretti is, the clear voice of a group does not represent all of its diversity. That’s why you need a set of personas. All user groups should be clearly represented. This shows stakeholders the diversity of their user groups and allows you to test features based on them.
This brings us to the third reason why personas are worth it. Personas do the stress test of designs.
Let’s go back to the medical app. What works for Dr. Margarette maybe doesn’t work for Dr. Marcus. Dr. Margarette desires humanization in the treatment of patients, while Dr. Marcus is for the better management of the user’s clinical information.
Finally, now that you know what a persona is, how personas help UX designers, and how to create a persona, let’s find out how personas help us tell a user story. In our world, the user is always the priority.
3. Concluding
While it’s important for personas to accurately represent users, it’s impossible to meet each of their specific needs. Personas are also context-specific, meaning they should be focused on the behaviours and goals of users who interact with the product effectively.
We will use the persona information to create designs that meet the needs of users, such as Margarette. This ensures that they have the best possible experience when using your application or product.
