Personas
A key challenge for web design and development teams is to step beyond their own preconceptions and approach their sites as a real user would.
You should always start with a solid knowledge of User Needs and Usability Testing can really open your eyes – there’s no substitute for seeing people actually using your website and it always produces a few surprises.
But how do you keep this insight fresh as you develop your designs? Personas are a great tool for making customer knowledge digestible, engaging and applicable.
Using the depth data gathered from real users and real target users, we develop a series of archetypal user descriptions, encapsulating their offline lifestyle and character features, plus their online goals, attitudes, motivations and behaviours.
Good personas are based on real data and are carefully designed to draw out important differences in attitudes and behaviours. Because they are represented as individuals, they are easy to relate to and understand
Successful design teams use personas as a continuous reference point, enabling them to conduct walkthroughs and make design and functionality judgments from the perspective of real users, testing various aspects of their offering against the key defining attributes of each persona. This helps to ensure a project remains on track throughout its lifecycle.
