Writing User Personas

​​Personas are prototypic users of an app or website that represents the requirements of larger teams of users,
in terms of their goals and private characteristics. They act as ‘stand-ins’ for real users and facilitate guide decisions concerning functionality and design. In other words, it's an illustration of the goals and behaviour of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from information collected from interviews with users.

To write a realistic User Persona, collecting data from multiple sources is best. i.e the key stakeholders of a business, sending out a survey, or better still conducting an interview in person. The more views you get, the simpler it'll be to make effective, all-round personas – personas that aren’t too heavily biased towards a singular opinion or information supply.

Personas typically embody the subsequent key pieces of information:
• Persona cluster (i.e. internet manager)
• Fictional name
• Job titles and major responsibilities
• Demographics such as age, education, ethnicity, and family status
• The goals and tasks they're attempting to complete using the site
• Their physical, social, and technological environment
• A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona because it relates to your website
• Casual pictures representing that user group

As a Project Manager, writing personas has helped me to empathize more with the user. I had to put myself in the user's shoes in order to feel their pain points and pleasure.

Conclusion
Understanding the needs of users is one of the most crucial success factors for any App or website project. Personas enable you to spot and communicate user desires efficiently and effectively. By developing ‘stand-in’ users, based on real user information, the design team will concentrate on coming up with for these archetypical users with the confidence that the needs of the broader user base will be meet.

Author

Ademiju James 
Project Manager 
Brave Achievers Incubator Program