Persona – an overview

(Extract from the paper The User as a personality. Using Personas as a tool for design. Position
paper for the course workshop “Theoretical perspectives in
Human-Computer Interaction” at IPLab, KTH, September 3, 2002)

Stefan Blomkvist
Department of Information Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, Uppsala Universitet
stefanb@hci.uu.se

Introduction
A persona is a model of a user that focuses on the individual’s goals when using an artefact. The
model has a specific purpose as a tool for software and product design. The persona model
resembles classical user profiles, but with some important distinctions. It is an archetypical
representation of real or potential users. It’s not a description of a real, single user or an average
user. The persona represents patterns of users’ behaviour, goals and motives, compiled in a
fictional description of a single individual. It also contains made-up personal details, in order to
make the persona more “tangible and alive” for the development team.
The idea of personas originated from Alan Cooper, an interaction designer and consultant. It’s a
part of an approach to software design called Goal-directed design. I refer to it as an approach or
idea, because it’s not a theory about users or interaction, neither is it a complete process for
software development. Cooper has introduced the ideas about personas and goal-directed design
in the book The inmates are running the asylum (Cooper 1999) and in articles (Cooper 1996). In
addition, goal-directed design is promoted through Coopers consulting firm, so he has a
commercial interest in it as well.

Purpose of the paper

Cooper’s book and the idea of personas has been discussed to a certain degree and are often
mentioned briefly in HCI courses, but has not really made much impact in the academic HCI
community. Only a few articles mention it, e.g. Jettmar & Nass (2002) and Muller & Carey
(2002). As the knowledge about personas isn’t widespread, I believe there are reasons to take a
closer look at these ideas.

Personas and goal-directed design

The word persona1 illustrates one of the important characteristics of Cooper’s concept – that a
model of a user also should have a bit of personality – a life-like character driven by personal
motives.
But why should users’ personality be important? According to Cooper (1999), it’s a solution to a
common problem in the design process. Concepts as “user”, “designed for the user” and “user-

1
The word persona is derived from the Latin persona, referring to the masks worn by actors in ancient
theatres. Cooper uses the terms persona and archetype, which also are common in Jungian psychology. But
in this case, a persona is not really near Jung’s definition. In Jungian psychology, a persona is the
personality that an individual projects to others, as differentiated from the authentic self. Cooper doesn’t
refer to Jung or ancient theatres. However, in his meaning of persona, he is somewhat inspired by the
traditional usage of the term
Persona – an overview 2
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

friendly” are too vague and therefore not practical to use as design models or definitions for the
communication in the development team. With a blurred concept of “the user” there is easy to
design for almost every possible feature. The result is often a bad compromise burdened with
usability problems. Cooper (1999, p.126) labels this phenomena as “the elastic user”
Cooper recommends to never refer to “the user” in design. Instead, one should use a very specific
individual – a persona – and direct the design for this individual. The reason for this approach is
according to Cooper (1999, p.128): “The more specific the persona is, the more effective they are
as design tools. With more specific, idiosyncratic details, the persona becomes a “real” person in
the minds of the developers.”
Cooper emphasises that a persona is a tool for communication and design within the group of
designers, software developers, managers, customers and other stakeholders. The purpose is not
to give a precise description or a complete theoretical model of a user. Instead, it’s aiming at a
simple, but good enough description of the user to make it possible to design the system.
So, how is the concept of persona defined? Cooper (1999, p.123) defines personas as:
“A precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish.”
Calde, Goodwin & Reimann (2002) gives a slightly more detailed definition:
”User models, or personas, are fictional, detailed archetypical characters that represent distinct
groupings of behaviours, goals and motivations observed and identified during the research
phase.”

An archetypal and fictional user

The definitions state that a persona is a fictional, detailed user model that represents archetypical
users. This implies that it isn’t a description of a real user or an average user. It is not job
descriptions or roles, which is common in other user profiles used in software design, for example
actors in use-cases. Though personas are not real people, they represent them throughout the
design process.
The fictional ingredient of personas, doesn’t mean that they are just fantasies. Actually, they are
not so much “maked up”, but discovered during the initial stages of the design. Fictional details
are added to make them more concrete and effective for design. For example, name, picture and
some personal background details are made up (Cooper 1999, pp.124-128).

Purposes and people

The definitions also focus on the motives behind the user’s actions. Cooper (1999, p.149) argues
that good interaction design has a meaning only in the context of a person actually using it for
some purpose: “You cannot have purposes without people […] That is why the two key elements
of our design process are goals and personas; purposes and people.”
A persona is therefore always defined by her goals. The goals are vital as they direct the design of
the artefact, which also is reflected in the name – “goal-directed design”.
There is an essential distinction between goals and tasks. A goal is an end condition, while a task
is an intermediate process necessary to accomplish the goal. Designing a system by the tasks
instead of the goals is a common mistake that leads to ineffective interaction.
Cooper’s definition of goals is mainly from an individual’s perspective, but some goals originate
from the organisation. Goals are on a very high level, for example “spend time on patient care”.
The individual’s goals are an essential part of the persona and the design process. They are
categorised in four different types: personal, corporate, practical and false goals. A typical
Persona – an overview 3
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

personal goal is for example to avoid feel stupid when using the financial system. A corporate
goal may be to increase the profit by using the financial system. If the different goals result in a
conflict, personal goals usually takes precedence over the other types. This is because the goals
that are closer to the individual’s basic motives are the most important. Of course, this influences
the design: ”The essence of good interaction design is devising interactions that let the users
achieve their practical goals without violating their personal goals.” (Cooper 1999, p.150).

Personal goals
Personal goals are simple, universal and personal, e.g. not make mistakes, get an adequate amount
of work done and have fun or at least not be too bored.
Cooper (1999, p.156) notes that the personal and common nature of these goals makes them easy
to ignore. Paradoxical, they are seldom discussed in the design process or included in other user
models.

Corporate goals
These goals are the businesses or work organisation’s goals with a particular system, transferred
to the persona. They are important as they focus the design on the big issues. But a system must
fulfil the personal goals first. Some examples: Increase the market share, and offer more products
or services.

Practical goals
Practical goals bridge the gap between the objectives of the organisation and the objectives of the
individual. For example, the practical goal of handling the client’s demands connects the
corporate goal of higher profits with the user’s personal goal of being productive.
Cooper (1999, p.157) denotes corporate and practical goals as hygienic goals, which means that
they are necessary for the user, but are powerless to motivate by themselves.

False goals
False goals are goals that are not relevant for the user. Many of these are really objectives to
support the technical development of a system. Thus motives of the programmers and not of the
users. Some examples: save memory, save keystrokes, run in a browser, safeguard data integrity
or use new technology.

Persona example
Calde et al (2002) has an example of a persona used in their design of a health-care management
system. (The example in the article is a summary. In the actual design case, the description of the
persona was about a full page.)

Persona: Rhonda Wilson, Nurse Unit Coordinator

Rhonda is a 36-year-old registered nurse who has worked at

several skilled nursing facilities. She started out in acute care but
moved to long-term care so she could have more autonomy.
Rhonda was promoted to Unit Coordinator four years ago
because she is very competent and generally well organised.
Persona – an overview 4
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

Rhonda is entirely overwhelmed and is drowning in paper, even more so than the
average nurse. She often misses eating dinner with her boyfriend because she has
to work late, filling out forms and reports.
Rhonda’s goals are to:
Spend time on patient care and staff supervision, not paperwork.
Be proactive. Rhonda needs to understand trends in order to solve problems
before they happen, instead of just reacting to crises.
Know that things are being done right. Rhonda supervises the unit because she’s
good at what she does. If nurses aren’t following procedure or documenting
things, she wants to know right away.

How to create Personas

Goal-directed design
Goal-directed design is not a complete, detailed process for software development like for
example Rational Unified Process (RUP). Rather, it comprises an approach to design based on
personas, goals and scenarios. Cooper doesn’t mention any scientific studies to support his ideas,
however his book is full of examples in an entertaining style that is suppose to back up his ideas
(Cooper 1999).
During system development, a number of personas are created. They are used as main characters
in a scenario-based, iterative design process (Cooper 1996). Even if personas are user models that
have fictional elements, they are based on studies of real or possible users. Cooper doesn’t
describe in detail how the data for the personas are collected and analysed, but Calde et al (2002),
Freydman, (2002) and Goodwin (2001) gives more profound descriptions.
Ethnographic field studies and contextual inquiry are used in the early phases of the design in
order to get data about the users. The result is a number of behavioural patterns for a future or an
existing system. The pattern points to the users’ goals and motives that is the desired effect of
using the system. In business and technical domains, these patterns tend to map to professional
roles. For consumer products they tend to correspond to lifestyle choices (Calde et al, 2002).

The cast of characters

In the next phase, several personas are created, based on the behavioural patterns and its
associated goals. By creating a number of distinct personas, the whole range of behaviour is
covered. Ideally, the behaviour of the personas should not overlap in order to keep the number of
personas to a minimum.
Each persona is elaborated in more detail. Goodwin (2001) suggests that a description of persona
should be captured in one to two pages consisting of goals, skills, attitudes, environment and a
few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life. The number of personal details must be
balanced. Too much “personality” is in the way. With too little, there is a risk that persona will
turn into a generic user instead of a precise design target.
Personas are design tools. The persona is unique for the domain and the design problem it was
created for. As the persona isn’t a complete and general model of a user, it can’t be used in other
domains or used later for new products (Goodwin, 2001).
Persona – an overview 5
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

Every project gets its own cast of characters, which consists of 3-12 unique personas. Not
everyone is designed for, but they are all useful for articulating the user population. Some are
defined only to make it clear that we are not designing for them (a negative persona). Depending
how much different personas should influence the design, they are given different status: primary,
secondary, supplemental, served and negative. Every cast of characters has at least one primary
persona, the individual who is the main focus of the design.
To be a primary, a persona is someone who must be satisfied, but cannot be satisfied with a user
interface designed for any other persona. Identifying the primary persona is a vital step in the
development of the cast of characters. Cooper (1999, p.137) argues that every primary requires a
separate and unique user interface. If two primaries are identified, two different interfaces should
be designed.
The following phase of goal-directed design, focuses on scenarios that follow the persona’s goals.
A scenario can be seen a distinct activity set in a specific context. Cooper (1999, p.180) defines a
scenario as “a concise description of a persona using a software-based product to achieve a goal”.
Thus, personas are the main characters of scenarios. Scenarios are also constructed from the
information gathered during the initial investigation phase.
Personas are “played” through the scenarios, to test the validity of the design. Through the
scenarios, the design could change to fulfil the needs of the persona.

Discussion: The perspective of personas and goal-

directed design
Goal-directed design and personas are an approach to software design. With is focus on practical
interaction design, it is not really a theoretical perspective of human-computer interaction.
Although Cooper’s ideas implies a certain perspective on the role of users, the usage of artefacts
and certainly on design of technology. I will analyse some important characteristics of the
persona/goal-directed design approach: aim of perspective, relation with design, unit of analysis,
and relation between artefact– person.

Aim of this approach and relation with design

What’s the aim of the approach of personas and goal-directed design and what’s the relation with
design? Cooper’s intention is that it should be a practical process for interaction design, which
will result in usable products. A persona is a tool for design and communication in the system
development team. By using this tool will help the designers to focus on the right users and their
motives, including personal goals that can influence the use. The more specific the persona is the
more effective it is as a design tool. This addresses the problem with the elastic user, which is
common in interaction design.
Thus, the persona-approach aims to give an understanding and a description of the users to a
certain degree. It is useful only in the context of a specific design problem. In this limited domain,
the persona model should also be able to predict the users’ behaviour in order to direct the design.
At least, this is what Cooper says. Exact how this is accomplished is not discussed. Somehow, He
assumes that the designers’ knowledge of the persona’s goals and the context (scenario),
combined with design-common-sense, will move the design in the right direction. I think this is a
major weakness of goal-directed design. The design process only focuses on the creation of
personas, not so much how personas should guide the design. At least, user tests of prototypes in
an iterative way, are needed to validate the design. Cooper (1999, pp.205-209) is sceptic to user
testing and iterative prototyping, though he doesn’t reject them completely. Instead he argues that
interaction design is the far most important part of system development.
Persona – an overview 6
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

Unit of analysis
What’s the unit of analysis presented by the persona and goal-directed design perspective? The
users are working to accomplish their goals by using a software-based tool. The focus is on the
user and her goals. The activity is something that happens when the user is trying to achieve her
objectives. The activity (or scenario) is the context in where the user and tool are interacting, but
this is somewhat outside the scope. Cooper describes the focus of his perspective as “people and
purposes – personas and goals”.

Relation between artefact and person

What’s the relation between artefact and the user in the persona approach? The main focus is on
the user and her goal. People and things are not equal. Artefacts are mere tools. Though the tool
doesn’t just exist – it is designed for a specific purpose.
By contrast, the persona is created only to be an instrument for design of an artefact. The artefact
is then the tool for the user to accomplish her goals. So there is a dualistic relationship. The
purpose of the artefact is to be designed to satisfy the user’s need. The persona is an archetype of
the users, unique for every design project and artefact. Therefore the existence of the persona is
dependent on the specific designed artefact.
The view on the artefacts has a narrow perspective. In his book, the artefacts to be designed are
almost always regarded as “software-based products” or just “products” (Cooper 1999). The
products are either consumer products used by individuals, e.g. a scanner, or software
applications used in business or office work, e.g. an electronic calendar or a spreadsheet. Mainly,
the products are used by a single individual without relation to other user’s or other systems. The
action happens between the individual and the single tool/product.
The relation between the user and the artefact raises the question of the role of the user in the
persona approach. Cooper says that a persona isn’t a job description or a role. But what is it then?
His opinions imply that it is a user of products, which is close to think of the user as a consumer,
either as a private consumer or a professional worker. As a consumer, the product has to meet our
goals, but the persona’s goals are dependent on the product, excellent designed or not. The
process doesn’t ask the question if the product is needed in the first place. Maybe our goals are
completely different if we don’t have the product at all or if we have a completely different
artefact? The restricted perspective of Cooper’s approach may lead to better designed artefacts,
but may also lead to completely wrong artefacts for human work.

Comparison with ideal types

The ideal types of HCI perspectives (system theoretical, humanistic and socio-technical) are
characterised by a number of properties, amongst them person, division of labour, relation man-
machine and system development (Nurminen 1987).
Cooper’s focus on the user and her goals, is close to the humanistic perspective, where the
persona is an intentional actor and fully visible (Nurminen 1987). In the socio-technical
perspective, the emphasis is on the interaction between person and information system. This is
also included in Cooper’s approach, but the interaction is always a means for the user to achieve
her goals. The idea of a fully integrated system (the systems perspective) or a distinction of social
and technical systems (the socio-technical perspective), is not prominent in goal-directed design.
The view of system development also places goal-directed design close to the humanistic
perspective, where system development is focused on the use of the system and on the user’s
jobs. A difference is that Cooper also emphasises on users’ personal motives, not only the needs
of their job roles. Another difference is that the persona isn’t a real person, it’s an archetypical
Persona – an overview 7
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

and fictional representation of users. Cooper argues that real people are of great interest as raw
data, but are frequently useless – and often disadvantageous – to the design process. As a design
tool, it is more important that a persona is precise than accurate. All extreme/odd users in the
population aren’t that important to design for (Cooper 1999, p.129). This is another example of
consumer-view of users.

Conclusion
The main contribution of using personas in interaction design is that the process will be focused
on the user’s goals instead of tasks. The design process also regards personal objectives as
important, which often is neglected in design methods and in theoretical models of users. The risk
with personas is that the designers may easily be carried away and more or less make up personas
without careful analysing real users. Cooper has a commercial interest to promote goal-directed
design as a straightforward and effective design process. So it’s important to remember that
personas are not a complete and accurate tool for user modeling. Another weakness is that the
relevance of his ideas isn’t confirmed in scientific studies.
The role of the user in Cooper’s approach is blurred with the roles as a consumer and a marketing
target. The issue of usability and interaction design becomes a matter of satisfying the needs of
the consumers, not to improve human work and life.
Personas/goal-directed design emphasis that interaction is driven by users’ motives and goals. But
goal-directed design has a rather narrow view on users and activities, but this also makes it more
easy to use as a tool to direct design. This, naturally, is the main aim of the approach.
Persona – an overview 8
Stefan Blomkvist, Dept. of IT/HCI, Uppsala Universitet

References

Calde, S., Goodwin, K., & Reimann, R. (2002). SHS Orcas: The first integrated information
system for long-term healthcare facility management. Conference on Human Factors and
Computing Systems, Case studies of the CHI2002/AIGA Experience Design Forum. New York,
NY: ACM Press.
Cooper, A. (1996). Goal-directed design. Originally appeared in the September 1996 issue of Dr.
Dobbs Journal. http://www.cooper.com/articles/art_goal_directed_design.htm
(20/8/2002).
Cooper, A. (1999). The inmates are running the asylum. Indianapolis, IA: SAMS/Macmillan.
Freydenson, E. (2002). Bringing your personas to life in real life.
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/print/002343.php (20/8/2002)
Goodwin, K. (2001). Perfecting your personas.
http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/perfecting_your_personas.htm
(20/8/2002)
Jettmar, E. & Nass, C. (2002). Adaptive Testing: Effects on User Performance. CHI Letters, Vol
No. 4, Issue No.1. CHI 2002, April 20-25, 2002, ACM. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Muller, M. & Carey, K. (2002). Design as minority discipline in a software company: Toward
requirements for a community of practice. CHI Letters, Vol No. 1, Issue No.1. CHI 2002, April
20-25, 2002, ACM. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.