Role or Usage Based Personas
I recently saw an example of personas done from a usage occassion as opposed to being role based - so instead of "Mike - Salesperon" or "Tammy - Student", it was done from the perspective of segmentation of audience based on their usage, "Sam - loyal book buyer" or "Mary - occassional reader".
Is this just really a semantic difference??
I've always done personas based on role, however I've got a project that has potentially 12 - 15 of different roles, with several of them falling into a more generic "Producer" & "Consumer" buckets (I don't want to be that generic, because not all consumers have the same needs, nor do the producers).
I'm wondering what the group thinks about fewer, usage-based, personas where I would lose some of the depth of the individual roles, to focus on a few core personas about how people will be using the system: "Plan Creator", "Team Member", "Frequent Publisher", "Occassional Browser" - or something like that?.
This is for a very large, internal, cross-department application.
Does that make sense??
Thank you in advance!
Jon
Get the feed
Comments
Hi Jon,
each method can make sense - You should always ask yourself what method supports you best.
That depends on your ...
Thank you Holger!
Reading the articles now, I appreciate the reply!!
Have a great day!
Jon
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 8:33 AM, holger_maassen <holger.maassen@gmail.com> wrote:
hi Jon,
I like the idea of usage-based personas. I tend to create personas based on user needs which I suppose is more usage-based than role-based. So, I only create a distinct persona if I discover a unique set of needs for the site or tool. Otherwise, I think it's easy to get hung up on the demographics or character description of each persona.
For example, let's say my client has a group of young, college-aged users who want to use the site for the same purpose as a group of senior visitors. Even though there are 2 distinct profiles for these audiences, only one persona would likely be required. of course, there are always exceptions and per the comment above - it depends on what works best for you. based on your short description though, I think usage-based is the way to go. first instinct is usually best!
Lacey Kruger
Senior Information Architect
Convio, Inc.
lkruger@convio.com
512.652.7801
Lacey,
Cool - thank you for the reply!! Yeah, I'm probably going to end up doing the usage ones!
Love the comment about first instincts! :-)
Jon
I totally agree with the posted replies here. In fact I often wonder if designers aren't too quick to default to role-based personas, which are often driven by market segments or role definitions, rather than a behaviorally-oriented break-down.
Paul & Jeremy,
Thank you both for the replies!!
Happy Holidays!
Jon