About Face: Personas and Goals

What are personas?

User models that tell us composite archetypes and behavior patterns based on research.

Why use models in design?

They represent complex phenomena with a useful abstraction, emphasizing important features and de-emphasizing minor ones.

What is the primary power of personas?

Designing for specific types of individuals with specific needs instead of making functionality too broad, which increases cognitive load.

What three design pitfalls do personas help avoid?

The elastic user, self-referential design, and edge cases.

What is 'the elastic user' pitfall?

When people change the user to fit whoever is talking during product decisions, serving no one consistently.

What is 'self-referential design'?

When designers design only for themselves, making the product understandable only to them.

Why are personas effective?

They engage the empathy of the design and development team around user goals.

What are the 3 levels of cognitive processing?

Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective.

What is visceral processing?

Immediate, intuitive reactions to visual and sensory stimuli before interacting.

What is behavioral processing?

The middle level of cognitive processing that helps us manage simple behaviors.

What is reflective processing?

Conscious consideration and reflection on past experiences, associating meaning and value over time.

What are the 3 types of user goals?

Experience goals, End goals, and Life goals.

What are experience goals?

Goals regarding how a user wants to feel while using a product, such as feeling smart and in control.

What are end goals?

What the user wants to accomplish by using the product, such as discovering music in an app.

What are life goals?

Broad personal ambitions, such as succeeding in a career.

What are nonuser goals that must be considered?

Customer goals, Business and organizational goals, and Technical goals.

Which goals should always be prioritized in successful products?

The goals of the individuals who actually use the product.

What are the 6 persona types?

Primary, Secondary, Supplemental, Customer, Served, and Negative.

What is a primary persona?

The main target of UI design whose satisfaction ensures others are at least not dissatisfied.

What is a served persona?

People directly affected by the product's use who are not direct operators (e.g., medical patients).

What is a negative persona?

An archetype representing people the product is explicitly not being built for.

What is the difference between personas and market segments?

Personas represent behaviors using a product, while market segments divide potential customers by demographic and psychographic differences.

What are provisional personas?

Personas that rely on available data and designer best guesses when resources are limited.

What are workflow or sequence models?

Flow charts or graphs useful for showing the flow of information and decision-making processes inside organizations.

What are artifact models?

Models that represent different physical or digital objects users utilize in tasks and workflows.

What are physical models in design?

Models that capture the layout of physical objects in a user's workspace to identify physical barriers to productivity.