This week’s class was dedicated to a design critique which allowed us all to show the slide decks we had created about our project so far. This allowed us to get valuable feedback on our project idea, branding and early design concepts which would help us with finalising and building the final deliverable.
I have researched and written blogs on design critiques for previous modules so this week I wanted to look at another topic I have seen cropping up from UX designers on LinkedIn as well as in articles on Medium and similar sites. This was User Personas, well actually the questioning of user personas and whether they provide useful insights and should we keep using them as part of a UX design process.
Since I was introduced to user personas in the first year of my Interaction Design degree, they have become a staple of my design process. I find them a useful way of placing myself in the shoes of a potential user and looking at what they need rather than what I want to create. They also provide me with a face for my users which for me anyway helps to humanise them and their needs. I find this useful to keep me on track throughout the design process when I need to make decisions as I can stop and look at the decision I need to make and think about what my persona wants or needs.
However, I have come across posts online where people start by saying things like “Why do you need to stop using personas” or “Are your user personas not working?” As I find user personas useful in my work I wanted to look at this in more detail to see if there was something I was missing or if I could improve my personas.
The post which made me want to look at this topic included this image:
This included other options I could use as well as personas during the research and discovery phase of my projects and linked to this https://www.userinterviews.com/ux-research-field-guide-chapter/personas (last accessed 01/04/24) part of a UX Research Field Guide.
This guide looks at the issues put forward by people who are against using user personas and why they feel this way. One of the issues that has been identified is that UX designers and researchers are not the only professionals to use personas, they are also very popular with marketers. However, the personas marketers use have very different purposes they are looking to align their offers and content with potential customers, whereas designers and researchers want to know a user’s needs to develop a product to meet them. As the purpose of a persona is different it makes sense that they will look for different things within the persona and this is where the issue can occur, if you try and use a marketing persona for design work (or vice versa) it is likely it won’t provide you with what you need and therefore it won’t be much use to your design.
Another issue this article looks at is people confusing user personas with other methods of understanding users such as Empathy Maps, User Journeys or Jobs to be Done. While all these methods are used to help you understand your target users, they all do so from a different point of view and provide different results. So, while a user persona helps to understand a user’s needs and motivations, it won’t give you information on how they feel or what they say, for this you need to create an empathy map for your persona. A persona alone is often not enough and requires you to create other pieces of research to get the insights you need. If you expect to get all the insights from a persona you are likely to be disappointed. Therefore, understanding each of the different pieces of work you can do and what they will provide you is essential as then you can consider the needs of the project and select what research techniques are best suited to the individual project.
This is what it ultimately comes down to, user personas are not perfect they will not always provide you with everything you need and as it says in the article, if you cannot find a concrete way that personas will help the project then you are better not to use them.
This article offers a much deeper look at user personas and tips to make the most from them, for me what reading this guide tells me, is that personas are a highly effective tool in the design process if they are used correctly and effectively. If they are used in the wrong context or without a valid reason, they are likely to fail and not provide you with what you need. I need to ensure I use my user personas in the right way pairing them with other techniques when required and even not creating personas when the need is not there, this guide is the best one-stop guide I have found for user personas and as such, I have bookmarked it for further reference.
Much like user personas when used correctly design critiques can provide valuable insights into your work so far and provide actionable feedback to improve the design. This is what happened with this critique I was able to not only receive ideas on what I could improve but also gain confidence from the positive feedback that I was on the right track and moving towards creating an effective and high-quality final deliverable.