Personas or Users?

TecEd has teamed with clients on hundreds of research projects and in many cases, our researchers use the techniques of user modeling.

The process of user modeling identifies the typical “personas” of the website or application being studied, and puts the focus on each persona’s goals for interacting with the application.

What’s important to note is that the concept of a “persona” — an archetypical user of a website or product – is not the same as a “user.”

When it comes to usability testing, personas are defined as the detailed profiles of fictional people based on the results of ethnographic research, surveys or interviews.

In other words, think of personas as the best model, or representative example, of the person who would interact with the website or application.

Composite Individuals

In many of our user research projects, persona development supports the design process by identifying and prioritizing the roles and user characteristics of key audiences for a product, system, or website.

The end result of this process is the creation of “composite individuals” to represent the key audiences. The product team forms a unified vision of the intended uses of a design through reference to agreed-on personas.

Enter User Stories

While personas tell us who the user is, user stories tells us what they do.

Once the personas are established, user stories are detailed descriptions of how the persona may interact with the system.

As an example, each of the following user stories represents one type of persona performing steps to achieve a specific goal.

Here are some examples:

• A high school student enrolled in an online e-learning class accesses the e-learning website to take a quiz of the material he just learned
• A parent logs on to the family section of the e-learning website to monitor their child’s current grade to date.
• A teacher logs on to the remote e-learning website to contact both the student and parent with a status email noting attendance and idle time of the student.

Note that even though these three distinct personas all relate to a single application being tested, there are three completely different user stories.

So which came first – the persona or the user story?

The first step was establishing the three representative examples of the types of people who would interact with the website or application (student, parent, teacher).  After that, the user stories were developed to highlight the typical tasks performed by each persona.

User modeling is a powerful means to identify specific opportunities to improve, streamline, and move to user centered design to make sure the site or application provides the most value to all types of users.

Additional Resources on Personas and User Stories

Read about a TecEd Nextivity research project that incorporated persona development, just one of many examples culled from our client success stories.

You can also read more about personas in this informative UX Booth article entitled “Personas: Putting the Focus Back on the User.”

To see if user modeling is right for your project, please contact TecEd.