A persona is 鈥渁 summary representation of the system鈥檚 intended users, often described as real people鈥� (Brown, 2011, p. 34). In fact, personas are fairly easy to create.

What makes a good persona

• Represent a major user group for your website聽
• Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups聽
• Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the site聽
• Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality聽
• Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values聽

One thing to remember: personas aren't born from nothing. For them to be representative of your audience, you need to base them on surveys, market research, interviews, etc. (Brown, 2011). A good persona description is not a list of tasks or duties (鈥淧ersonas 101,鈥� 2011).聽

Also, don鈥檛 forget to limit yourself to the main audiences; only create three or four personas.聽

It is better to paint with a broad brush and meet the needs of the larger populations than try to meet the needs of everyone (Usability.gov, 2013).

Persona example

Mark Cohen Director, Human Resources
Demographics 44 years old Has 2 children Married Has a B.A. in psychology from 91社区 and an M.Sc. in industrial relations from the University of Montreal.
Goal Mark is looking for different continuing study programs in order to train some employees.	Environment Mark is mostly browsing websites from work on his laptop, but from time to time he takes his phone out when he get's bored on the commute.

References

• by Daniel M Brown