Understanding Users: Developing Personas for Targeted Design

This artifact features two personas developed during my graduate coursework in Usability and User Experience (UX/UI). Personas are detailed, research-based representations of target audience members, created to guide design and communication decisions. These personas illustrate how diverse user needs and goals can influence the success of a product or service, making them invaluable for audience-centered design.

Background

The goals of the project included:

Learning methodologies to understand user demographics, behaviors, goals, and challenges.
Synthesizing research data into personas to inform design and usability testing.
Demonstrating the application of user-focused insights to technical communication and UX projects.

The deliverable was two detailed personas designed to represent potential users of specific products or services.

Objectives

The primary objectives of this project were:

To practice gathering and analyzing user data for persona creation.
To develop realistic, actionable personas that highlight user needs and preferences.
To use personas to inform design and usability testing strategies for broader projects.

Outcome

The project achieved the following results:

Two comprehensive personas, “Liv Kjeldsen” and “Erin” (fictional characters based on real-world research), representing distinct user archetypes.
Insights into how varying user needs can affect design decisions, particularly for educational and professional tools.
Practical experience in applying personas to enhance the user-centered design process.

Approach

The personas were developed based on real-world research and user analysis. Each persona included a detailed biography, user goals, challenges, and behaviors. For example, Liv Kjeldsen represents a career-switching professional seeking upward mobility through technical communication, while Erin highlights a logistics expert with unique childcare-related responsibilities.

These personas were created with a focus on ensuring realistic and relatable user representations. They were subsequently used to guide design choices in other UX and technical communication projects, ensuring alignment with user expectations and improving usability outcomes.