Fluid Persona Format

This persona format was created to organize information in the Fluid Personas. The format chosen was based on the 11850928 of many persona examples below.

Page 1: Summary

Page 2: More Details

Comparative Analysis

Todd Warfel Example Persona

From: http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-personas

Positives

Nice categorization: "The Moderately Seasoned Professional"
Nice tagline: "I'd like to see a good, better, best."
Shows Persona scales
Goals are prominent
Important Use cases highlighted in "Primary Use"
Frustrations & Pain Points are prominent
Succinct narrative story about what's important to Michael
Great picture

Negatives

Persona doesn't have a ton of personal details, so he may not be as humanized as he could be. (But maybe he's compelling enough without those details.)

Chopsticker Example Persona

PDF version of Timothy Powell Persona

Positives

Nice graphic design
Very compelling picture
Very interesting personal details that give you a sense of his personality ("I don't suffer fools!), but relate very well to his work context
Goals are prominent (interesting tying of goals to a story about them)
The second page is sort of an appendix with additional details

Negatives

Tagline is a little long
Details in the left sidebar aren't arranged very well (no headings)
Not super easy to get an "at a glance" sense of who he is

From: http://chopsticker.com/2007/06/08/download-an-example-persona-used-in-the-design-of-a-web-application/

Kivio Persona Chart

From: http://wiki.openusability.org/kivio/index.php/Personas

Positives

A chart can be an interesting companion to personas, to help us understand their differences
Table format allows users to easily see how the personas are different
Table format allows users to easily pick out the information that is relevant to them
Table format allows for the breakdown of information into the categories that are important to the application/site being designed; may be good when there is a lot of important information which is paralleled among the personas
Personal/social life is included, but in the table format can be ignored or skimmed

Negatives

The table format makes it less story-like, and thus perhaps less compelling

Cooper Personas

From: http://www.sapdesignguild.org/editions/edition3/portal_process.asp

Positives

Drawings can be used for provisional personas to further emphsize the fact that they are not based on research (and thus less "real")
The drawings of the cars they want really add a tangible example of their differences
Actual Cooper Personas appear to be about 4 paragraphs of text with a name, age, and perhaps one other characteristic (e.g. email) at the top. I think this is a (less digestible) format that works for them because the personas are primarily used by their internal design team, or shared with clients in a very interactive session. I don't think they have to convince people to use them as much as we (or many other organizations) do.

Negatives

Clearly, these aren't full personas and a lot more detail is needed

Viget Labs Persona

http://www.viget.com/advance/why-personas-are-valuable/

Positives

Nice photo
Nice tagline
Nice categorization: "The busy student"
Simple but effective graphic design
Quick Stats gives you "at a glance" demographic info on Jack
Goals are prominent
List of tasks (sort of scenarios) user may want to perform on the site

Negatives

Pretty bare-bones; not a lot of information
He isn't really humanized; it seems more like a user profile.

Persona for Student Assistant Tool

From: http://uxevolved.com/interfaceDesign.html

Positives

I think you do get a sense of what Mark is like despite the lack of narrative detail. There is enough narrative in each section to humanize him.
Nice photo

Negatives

No categorization of Mark (E.g. "the social drinker")
Is Education & Education Overview really necessary
Why are technology usage and cell usage separated?
Not sure if it makes sense to make hobbies so prominent..could be part of Personal Info
Tagline may be a little contrived

Engine Service Design Example Personas

From: http://www.enginegroup.co.uk/service_design/m_page/personas

Comments

These seem similar to ours, with different sections for Ambitions, Interests & Challenges.
Can't see enough to comment on positives or negatives.

Engine Service Design - Filling in a Persona Board

From: http://www.enginegroup.co.uk/service_design/m_page/personas

Positives

Interesting activity for persona creation. I believe they have the "magical services" that Cooper asks you to think about in design.

Negatives

Are people limited by having to write in boxes with the questions already laid out?

Razorfish Persona

From: http://bobulate.com/documents/scenarios.pdf

Positives

Nice categorization: "The Learner"
Nice tagline
Good combination of narrative paragraphs and bulleted lists (though I think the bulleted lists could be chosen a bit better)
Includes very well-fleshed out scenarios

Negatives

Attributes seem somewhat repetitive of Background
Classical print design layout may alienate folks more acclimated to "use all the space" projector and screen targeted layouts.

iQContent Persona Example

From: http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_75/

Positives

Wow, is he ever humanized!

Negatives

You need to read the whole thing to really know him
A tagline or Categorization may help to remember him 'at a glance'
Not sure how this connects to a product being designed for him

Small Portion of a Larger U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) Persona

From: http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html

Positives

Nice picture
Nice tagline
Nice narrative summary of what Matthew does

Negatives

Demographic info is lumped into a short section which also includes tech-savvyness
Goals are missing, or labeled as "Key Attributes"

Sakai & Image Gallery Personas

Eileen - Primary persona Image Gallery

Persona Format

Persona Format

Positives

Low cost for development
Persona map makes it clear who is primary and how the others fall around her
High level description about show she is
Nice goals, relevant to product
Can utilize the format created for image gallery in the wiki
Like the way "Level of (technical) expertise" and Tools are broken out

Negatives

Not a lot of details about how she gets her work done
Not as "snazzy" looking as some others
Not a great "at a glance" view

Fluid Personas

Catalina (more sectioned version)

Comments

I really like the short introductory paragraph at the beginning, with a called out quote (though the quote may be a little too emphasized).
There are several called out quotes here, so we'd want to make sure her tagline is the most prominent.
If there is similar information in the narrative paragraphs and the bulleted lists, I think we want to eliminate it so people don't have to parse the same info twice (unless we do two different formats of each persona, one narrative and one bulleted).
I'm not sure the red headings work. Both because I think red is a bit of a danger color, and because it's hard to tell at first glance that the red heading is at a higher level than the black headings in the bulleted sections.
We may want to see if we can reduce the # of bullets a bit.
Are there other categories that would be helpful in the bulleted sections?
I'd move the "Professor & TA Manager in Spanish under her picture, because the name is what we want to really emphasize.

Student

Instructional Support Staff

Related Links

Personas

Designing with Personas

Persona Creation

Persona Categories

Other Persona Resources

Example Personas:
Fluid Personas
Sakai Personas
uPortal Personas

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