{"id":1268,"date":"2023-12-13T02:36:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2023-12-13T02:36:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T02:36:00","slug":"ux-personas-are-useless-unless-created-properly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/2023\/12\/13\/ux-personas-are-useless-unless-created-properly\/","title":{"rendered":"UX Personas are Useless. Unless Created Properly"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-33 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-1935696f\" data-id=\"1935696f\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-inner-section elementor-element elementor-element-3c14e83e elementor-hidden-tablet elementor-hidden-mobile no-print elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"3c14e83e\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-50 elementor-inner-column elementor-element elementor-element-b88d93b\" data-id=\"b88d93b\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-5355f503 elementor-share-buttons--skin-flat elementor-share-buttons--color-custom elementor-grid-1 elementor-widget-mobile__width-initial elementor-share-buttons--view-icon-text elementor-share-buttons--shape-square elementor-widget elementor-widget-share-buttons\" data-id=\"5355f503\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"share-buttons.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<div class=\"elementor-grid\">\n<div class=\"elementor-grid-item\">\n<div class=\"elementor-share-btn elementor-share-btn_print\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Share on print\"><i class=\"fas fa-print\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"elementor-share-btn__text\"><span class=\"elementor-share-btn__title\">by Adam Fard<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-33 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-77489374\" data-id=\"77489374\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-0c92e2c elementor-widget elementor-widget-image\" data-id=\"0c92e2c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"image.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-image-13766\" src=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/1619512048-ux-personas-min-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1613\" height=\"916\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-fd2b896 elementor-widget elementor-widget-shortcode\" data-id=\"fd2b896\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"shortcode.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<div class=\"elementor-shortcode\">\n<p>Here\u2019s the deal. Documentation is only useful if it\u2019s used. Additionally, the contents of documentation need to be useful as well. Seems pretty obvious, right? We wish it were that simple. Any sort of persona documentation, in our experience, is more often than not utterly useless. That\u2019s not to say that the activity itself is useless. Absolutely not. However, the majority of UX personas we\u2019ve seen are of no help whatsoever. Why is that? Mostly because people tend to write down stuff that is irrelevant to product management or UX design. What makes a good persona then? \u2013 Great question. Let us explain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-5544134 elementor-widget elementor-widget-theme-post-content\" data-id=\"5544134\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"theme-post-content.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<h3 id=\"h-what-are-ux-personas\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">What are UX Personas?<\/h3>\n<p>On the off chance, that you need your memory jogged on what UX personas are, here\u2019s a quick reminder.<\/p>\n<p>User personas are fictional representation of <strong>real<\/strong>\u00a0data that represents the commonalities among certain groups of users. Generally, the tangible version of a UX persona is a 1 to 3-page document that outlines patterns, skills, goals, and other traits of a certain user group.<\/p>\n<p>Did you notice how we formatted \u201creal\u201d as bold in the previous paragraph? That was certainly intentional. One of the fundamental mistakes we see time and again is creating a persona based purely on assumptions. Personas should reflect actual data. More on that later.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619512964-personaexample.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Image4\" src=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619512964-personaexample.jpeg\" alt=\"Image4\" width=\"1024\" height=\"664\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<h3 id=\"h-start-with-what-ux-persona-cargo-cult\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Start with\u00a0<em>what:\u00a0<\/em>UX Persona cargo cult<\/h3>\n<p>Here\u2019s why you would bother with creating a user persona:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Empathetic design<\/strong>. With the help of UX personas, you can document user research findings and enable the people involved in product development to practice empathy through product decisions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Decision making.<\/strong> Guiding your product decisions depends on your users\u2019 traits.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Documenting research findings<\/strong>. A user persona document should be the hub that\u2019s frequently consulted and updated. That\u2019s one of the places you go to when in doubt.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As the famous quote goes, people ignore products that ignore people. The UX personas, as an essential tool to empathize with and study users, is exactly what helps you to do the opposite of ignoring people.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s circle back to the mistakes we see people make. What we see happen often, is a bit of a product management cargo cult. Everybody does personas and most, if not all, product people agree they are useful. Then let\u2019s create a UX persona as well! Such a thought process might lead to positive outcomes, of course. However, this line of thinking jumps to \u201cwhat\u201d without considering \u201cthe why\u201d. Informing your user research\u00a0with goals, such as those that we outlined above, will help you create a valuable product artifact, rather than merely checking a box in your to-do list. Not seeing the goal at the end of the road results in generic unactionable personas that gather dust on your Google Drive.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619513396-persona-cargo-cult.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Image4\" src=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619513396-persona-cargo-cult.png\" alt=\"Image4\" width=\"1024\" height=\"781\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<h3 id=\"h-assumptions-based-approaches\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Assumptions-based approaches<\/h3>\n<p>Well, let\u2019s say you\u2019re building an app for social media management. You would probably then think that marketers and influencers would be good places to start with creating personas. That sounds right.<\/p>\n<p>What doesn\u2019t sound alright, however, is then assuming the motivations, goals, and other traits. Educated guesses are fine, of course, but you are not your user. Shallow research, or lack of thereof, leads to shallow understanding, and lukewarm, mediocre products as a result.<\/p>\n<p>That said, you should make sure that the personas reflect actual people. How do you do that? \u2013 Research. Generally, you would do the bulk of research in the earlier stages of the product design process. The findings will be used for a number of things: feature prioritization,\u00a0customer journey maps, studying competitors, creating UX personas, etc. The latter is useful since it crystalizes your knowledge of who you\u2019re creating the product for.<\/p>\n<p>In more concrete terms, your research activities may include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Qualitative methods (great for products pending launch);<\/li>\n<li>User interviews;<\/li>\n<li>Usability testing;<\/li>\n<li>Card sorting;<\/li>\n<li>Quantitative research (generally used for launched products);<\/li>\n<li>Surveys;<\/li>\n<li>A\/b testings;<\/li>\n<li>Usage data such as conversions, user retention, adoption rates, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This list is by no means exhaustive, but we find ourselves using these methods most often.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"h-getting-it-perfect-on-the-first-attempt\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Getting it perfect on the first attempt<\/h3>\n<p>As mentioned earlier, UX personas should be updated regularly. The first draft will be messy. That\u2019s the point of iterative approaches. You build new findings on top of the old ones. However, more often than not, we see people create superfluous personas just once and think they\u2019re done. We\u2019ve seen people include hobbies, siblings, education details, and other information that\u2019s quite frankly useless.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619513700-iterative-process.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Image4\" src=\"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/files\/Uxmag-articles\/2021-Articles\/Personas\/1619513700-iterative-process.jpeg\" alt=\"Image4\" width=\"1024\" height=\"435\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>Don\u2019t get us wrong, for some products information like background and education might inform decisions on, say,\u00a0UX copywriting. Nonetheless, in our experience, you need to dig deeper into the real motivations, goals, and habits. These are the things that deliver real value.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"h-creating-a-useful-persona\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Creating a useful persona<\/h3>\n<p>Now that we\u2019ve gone through some common mistakes people make, let\u2019s explore the path to a useful UX persona. We use a similar approach regardless of whether the product is launched or not. Here\u2019s a brief outline of what we do.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>First, we conduct a\u00a0workshop with stakeholders\u00a0(sales, marketing, product management, etc.) to talk about different user types. It\u2019s important to get up to speed with the current user intelligence. You don\u2019t always need to start from scratch;<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s important to invite a wide range of experts and team members to gather better insights;<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s also crucial to share all the data and prior research (if available) regarding the personas, so it can support the ideation with helpful data;<\/li>\n<li>During the said workshop, we would write down information on different user types and seek patterns and commonalities.<\/li>\n<li>We try to share the ownership of different user types so everyone can contribute their thoughts;<\/li>\n<li>If only a few patterns are emerging, or your personas feel generic, you\u2019re likely not going deep enough. Think of what information will be useful and where to get it;<\/li>\n<li>This step is crucial: try to dissect the main differences in terms of behavior, needs, pain points, and the information users are looking for. In doing so, you\u2019ll avoid talking about persona\u2019s food preferences when working on a banking app;<\/li>\n<li>Create baselines for your personas \u2013 this should summarize all the work done until now and achieve alignment across the team and with stakeholders.<\/li>\n<li>Validate and enhance those baselines by doing research and interviews;<\/li>\n<li>Document the results. You can either go with a fancy design or a simple spreadsheet. Both options serve their purpose just fine.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t forget to present the findings and final personas to the whole team, to avoid any misunderstandings (in case of changes) but also to highlight the value of research to skeptical stakeholders (that\u2019s why we don\u2019t use the baselines as the final personas).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3 id=\"h-outro\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Outro<\/h3>\n<p>The last thing this article should do is discourage you from creating a UX persona. Trust us, it\u2019s worth the effort. Keeping in mind some of the mistakes you\u2019ve mentioned, should lead you a long way to creating useful product management &amp; UX Design artifacts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Source: UX Personas are Useless. Unless Created Properly &#8211; UX Magazine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Adam Fard Here\u2019s the deal. Documentation is only useful if it\u2019s used. Additionally, the contents of documentation need to be useful as well. Seems pretty obvious, right? We wish it were that simple. Any sort of persona documentation, in our experience, is more often than not utterly useless. That\u2019s not to say that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":1269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/international.binus.ac.id\/graphic-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}