The Ideal Persona

While on the path of ideation and product research, one must stop and think about who the intended people are to market towards and who will benefit most from the application and product design in general. Jesse James Garrett gives more insight in “The Elements of the User Experience”, to the field of user research and why it’s more important than ever to incorporate this specific method into your marketing research.

In the third chapter of the book, Garrett mentions, “Some research tools-such as surveys, interviews, or focus groups- are best suited for gathering information about the general attitudes and perceptions of your users. Other research tools-such as user tests or field studies-are more appropriate for understanding specific aspects of user behavior and interaction with your product.” Getting to understand who your customers are and how your product will affect their lives, most likely in a positive light, is one of the most important aspects of the research process before finding consumers to examine your beta trials of the application or corresponding product.

At this point in the ideation and research process, I have decided which application I will be redesigning in a new and improved light. TV Time is a phone and tablet application that allows its users to track, react and sort their favorite tv shows and movies as well as share their data and submissions with their friends within the app community. I have personally used this application over the years and have known many different people who took advantage of its features throughout their daily life.

With this in mind, I took the background knowledge I had acquired from my youth and personal experience as a user of the application and used it to imagine the potential users that will eventually be the consumers of the product and what they need from the interface design. In the industry, this process is called creating a persona. Garrett reminds his readers that “A persona is a fictional character constructed to represent the needs of a whole range of real users. By putting a face and a name on the disconnected bits of data from your user research and segmentation work, personas can help ensure that you keep the users in mind during the design process.”

I took the widespread data of users from teens to senior citizens and comprised them into three separate personas with details including their technological capabilities, location, goals for the application, and finally a day in their lives.