Persona vs Product, The new chicken & egg?

We all are familiar with the riddle of chicken and egg. With so much contradictory information flying around, I wonder which one should come first, persona or the idea of a product ?
Persona is an arch typical character build in order to guide the designing of the product. In my opinion creating a persona is the logical thing to do because it is not realistic to use feed back from real users for every step of the process. Life style facts varies hugely from one person to another, so it is impossible to design a product that satisfy the needs of each and every individual. When creating a persona we try to identify the most generalized characteristics from a group of people.
However this does not mean we should create a random persona without having a clue about the product. Of course, back in the day so-called "inventors" might have blindly observed human lives with the hope of an eureka moment. But in today's fast moving world, with limited resources available one cannot afford to waste time in search of such eureka moments. Therefore it is more productive if the product-designer could first define an area (of human lives) that he wants to concentrate on.
For example, with our project, we started by deciding who we want to target with our product: People over sixty. This was followed by a primary brainstorming - session identifying possible products. At this stage we started creating persona, incorporating different aspects of older people's lives. Then more refined products were identified with the guidance of the persona created. Next these persona needs to be refined to exaggerate the particular aspects that are more crucial for our product.(You can follow the progress of our project from other entries)
My point is that the idea of having a persona followed by a product design or vice versa is neither productive nor pragmatic. Instead these two processes should be parallel and they should complement each other.

Why Personas?

Cooper (1999, p.123) defines personas as:
“A precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish.”
Calde, Goodwin & Reimann (2002) gives a slightly more detailed definition:
”User models, or personas, are fictional, detailed archetypical characters that represent distinct groupings"

For those who've either stumbled upon this page or been directed here via myself or another group member, you may be thinking "What's all this 'persona' stuff about?". References that provide comprehensive details of their origin and use can be found within the various resource links to the right of this page.

Basically, a persona is a model of a user that focuses on the individual’s goals when using a product/aretefact. The persona has a specific purpose in that it serves as a guide in the design process. It is an archetypal representation of real or potential users. The persona represents patterns of user behaviour, goals and motives, compiled in a fictional description of a single individual. It also contains fictional personal details, in order to make the persona appear more tangible and alive.

But why not use real people? It is not always practical or possible to consult with real users. However, the use of personas doesn't imply the elimination of real potential-users in the design process. Indeed, in our case personas will be utilised alongside real users.

The use of personas is therefore not a complete substitution for consulting with real users. Rather, it is a way of having a continuous presence of a set of users at our disposal,thereby providing a quick way of user-testing or brain-storming when access to real users could be problematic.

We have composed our personas so that they represent narratives that describe the flow of a typical day, as well as their skills, attitudes, environment, and goals. We have stated clear goals for what each person/persona wishes to achieve by using the product being designed.

Furthermore, we have:

• Restricted the number of personas required to a minimum, devising only those necessary to illustrate key goals and behavior patterns.


• Added life to the personas, but remembered that they are first-and-formeost design tools


• Restricted biographical detail by first focusing upon the workflow and behavior patterns, goals, environment, and attitudes of the personas (i.e. the information that is critical for design) — limited biographical detail was then added in order to provide the necessary personality


• Given each persona a few important goals that will help focus the design and reflect what the persona could gain from using a well-designed product


• Included experience goals for one persona, representing how the persona wants to feel when using a product (in this case, not feeling stupid or patronised). This represents people with considerable anxiety about technology.

Meeting 4: Personas Discussion

Today we met to discuss the personas we would create to assist us in the design and development of our product idea.

Having now decided to focus on the over 60s age group, the members of the group agreed to develop a persona each and post these to the blog in the next few days, ready for our next meeting scheduled for Monday 12th February.

It was decided that, ideally, each persona should represent a different age bracket (e.g. 60 - 65, 66 - 70, 70 - 80, and 80+) and have a different social, economic and cultural background to enable us to consider, and cater for, a broader section of society.

To assist us in this process, the team will be sourcing, reading and sharing articles on the concept of personas, in addition to those articles highlighted in recent HCI lectures:

• Perfecting Your Personas
• Personas: Practice and Theory
• Design basics

Furthermore, the team will begin researching, and developing, their persona through the observation and interviewing of elderly family members and those individuals to whom our product is aimed.