CCS Library: Research &amp; Writing: Design Research

Personas Overview

Personas represent the audience for products, spatial layouts, websites, and more. They model the major users of the end product and are useful for determining user behaviors. Creating personas requires user research and web analytics and includes the following steps:

Conduct user research:
- Who are your users?
- Why are they using this product/system?
Condense the research into relevant themes and groups
Brainstorm:
- Organize persona groups
- Name each group

Data Visualization

When creating data visualizations, over half of your time will be devoted to cleaning your data and transforming it into the visual. It is crucial that your spreadsheet conforms to the following:

All your variables are in columns
Only one piece of information per cell
Put each observation in its own row
Don't try to manipulate raw data (!!)
Export to a text based format (i.e. CSV)

For more tips, see the Data Visualization guide from the University of Texas Libraries.

Persona Motivations Chart

Objective	Questions
Define the purpose/vision for the site/product	What is the purpose of the product? What are the goals of the product?
Describe the user	Personal What is the age of your user? What is their gender? What is their highest level of education? Professional How much work experience do they have? What is their professional background? Why will they use the product? (User needs, interests, goals) Where (or from whom) are they getting information about your product or similar products? When and where will they access/use the product? (User environment, context) Technical What similar products do they use regularly?
User motivation	What motivates them? What are they looking for? What are they looking to do? What are their needs?

Objective

Questions

Define the purpose/vision for the site/product

What is the purpose of the product?
What are the goals of the product?

Describe the user

Personal

What is the age of your user?
What is their gender?
What is their highest level of education?

Professional

How much work experience do they have?
What is their professional background?
Why will they use the product? (User needs, interests, goals)
Where (or from whom) are they getting information about your product or similar products?
When and where will they access/use the product? (User environment, context)

Technical

What similar products do they use regularly?

User motivation

What motivates them?
What are they looking for?
What are they looking to do?
What are their needs?

All persona information on this page (plus more) from usability.gov.