PJ Urquilla, Project Manager

Here at Q, our web development methodology includes working with clients to identify personae – the people who will eventually use the website we’re building. It’s a simple exercise, but one that is crucial to our process. A few times, we’ve been met with blank stares as we tried to lead a room full of adults in an imagination exercise to name and describe these people. So I wanted to use my first blog post to explain what we look for when determining system persona.

Simply put, we’re trying to capture a narrative of who the user is and what they will be doing on the website. From a creative perspective, this helps us set the tone and the style of the design. For example, a photo-sharing site for grandparents would take a different direction than an online community for aerospace engineers. As we build the system, we use the persona exercise to help us define user actions and system roles.

We even go so far as to give the persona a name – a little trick that goes a long way during the definition process. While it may seem silly to talk about Tom, Dick or Harriet, approaching personae in this manner helps us design and build systems that meet the needs of a range of users – not just the obvious ones (or even worse, the people building or paying for the system). More importantly, talking about people helps the insiders see the site from the outside. All too often web projects are completed without the careful consideration of the range and diversity of users and their needs – resulting any number of problems: user abandonment, unrealized sales, a high bounce rate, or a decline in traffic.