In my user experience class the other day we learned about Persona Notepad's and how to create Persona's. As an *almost* ~college graduate~ I am trying to refine my craft/portfolio to hopefully land a job. So, creating a persona is a great tool for figuring out my audience. That way my audience's experience is a good one and they will be inclined to network with me, or potentially offer me a job.
With any product or service being offered you have to know your audience. Quovantis put it best by saying
"The real value of a user persona is to list down the goals/motivation of the people who will be using the application. Understanding the users, their motivations, their requirements helps in building user-centric products. That’s where personas help. They help to keep in check the concerns of a user at the forefront of every design decision."
You want to make the user experience as pleasing as possible and having information based on real people/behavior you can create that.
So how do you create a persona notepad? It is pretty simple and easy to do.
First Impressions
This is a great place to start.
Just list out what your persona's name is, what they look like (profile picture), what their job title is, and some demographic quality's
For example my persona is
Rachel Denison
Digital Marketing Analyst
Late 20s
Female
College graduated
Few years experience in copy-writing, strategy, and analytics
Listens to podcasts
Motivation and Behavior
This is the next category where you list your persona's goals, journey, motivation vs. ability, motivating factors, inhibiting factors, and possible triggers
example
Goal: Hire someone with an understanding of digital marketing to help with client work load.
Journey: They are looking at LinkedIn and websites to see what people are doing
Motivation vs. Ability: There is a medium amount of motivation because the work load is building and the ability is medium since she can click around on LinkedIn to see whats up
Motivating Factors: Again, needs help with client work
Inhibiting Factors: Limited time to look at profiles since she does have a full time job
Possible Triggers: If you are already connected with her on LinkedIn
Influences
This category is where you list what influences this person so you can get to know them better.
example
Influence 1: NPR
Influence 2: Lifestyle Magazine
Influence 3: Taylor Swift
Environment
This is the context in which your persona will consumer your content. So what device they use, what they think, feel, hear, and see.
example
Context 1: The device they would use is their laptop. So, it’s on the go but still has that full website feel.
Context 2: They would think about whose aesthetic vibes with theirs.
Context 3: They would feel like they want to know more and that they would want to see more.
Persona Family
This is the last category and it is just who are related persona's and how does this persona fit, in the context of other personas
example
Related: Heather Woody, Laura Slade, Heather Cofer
Matrix: fit in context because Rachel is a young women in the digital marketing world
If you fill this persona out you can start to get a better idea of who is viewing your website and how you can make their experience better!
