{"id":957,"date":"2018-11-30T09:57:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T09:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/digital-innovation\/en\/?p=957"},"modified":"2021-01-04T16:21:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T16:21:44","slug":"personas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/digital-innovation\/en\/personas\/","title":{"rendered":"Personas \u2013 When the User Is Not at Hand…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Personas in a nutshell \u2013 What are personas, and why do we need them<\/strong>?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the field of agile, distributed software development, and in a B2B context in particular, the client often is the only contact for the software developer. This is usually due to the end users not being available because they are either located elsewhere, separate from the development team, or do not have time. When a user is not close at hand, personas can help and compensate for the lack of contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personas are prototypical users representing a user group and their essential characteristics and needs in regard to the planned product. They consolidate the results of the context analysis, but they cannot replace the user research. They are designed as posters, as \u201clife-like\u201d and realistic as possible because otherwise, the persona is useless. In general, personas are developed in early project stages (analysis and planning), and they are used for performance\/target comparison throughout the entire development cycle. This enables the design and development team to focus on the users\u2019 requirements. Personas serve as a reference for decisions in discussions, and by asking questions like \u201cWould person x understand this?\u201d, they give priority to the user. Personas help the product owner in particular to evaluate ideas for new features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More often than not, it takes more than one persona to cover the prospective users of the software. If there are too many, possibly even contradictory, personas, it is advisable to classify them into primary and secondary personas. This helps to keep the focus on the target user group and prioritize the decision alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which elements are needed to create a good persona?<\/p>\n\n\n\n