Flutter App: PotatoVerse — Personas
User personas should be created at the beginning of the application development process; That is during the planning and research phase. Creating user personas early on in this process ensures that the application is built with the needs and expectations of its intended users in mind.
User personas can be created based on existing data, such as customer surveys and interviews, or by conducting new research to gain a deeper understanding of the target audience. The main focus of this research should be on identifying the users’ goals, motivations, pain points, and expectations when using the application.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of user personas and introduce three personas that represent our potential users. N.B. In our PotatoVerse project, we haven’t done actual research therefore our personas will just be based on ‘fictional data’.
Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way — https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them
Why are personas needed?
Always having a persona in mind while designing and developing is useful as it will lead to:
- Understanding your users. With the creation of personas, designers and developers are able to get the same view as that of the end users. This helps them have empathy and thus, build a product that is beneficial to the target market. They’ll get a better understanding of their needs, pain points, motivations, preferences, behaviours and end goals. The application can be tailored accordingly. E.g., if the target audience for our potato application includes busy professionals, then the app may need to include features such as quick and easy recipes, voice commands, and grocery list integration.
- Making the right decisions. Personas assist the designers and devs to know how to build the right features and scale them. The direction the app takes is guided by the needs of the real users who are represented by the personas.
- Eliminating bias. When user research is carried out to understand the target market, the designers get to see who they are designing for and hence eliminate the bias where they only ‘imagine’ who the target audience might be. Without personas, designers tend to think the market needs are similar to theirs. They run the risk of designing for themselves.
- Knowing your competition. Personas will help you understand what other apps/services they are using to solve their pain points and meet their goals. This will help you discover who the competitors might be. With this information in mind, it is possible to develop a better solution for the market. Do you know other potato apps? Share below :)
- Creating a good user experience. Personas make the design phase easy. With the persona data at hand, designers are able to know exactly what will work with the product and what wouldn’t. They ideation and prototyping phase is simplified and less complex and the eventual user experience is bound to be better.
- Knowing who your user isn’t. Just as much as personas help you know who your user is, the converse is also true. From studying the market, the designers can be able to tell which audience will not buy into their app/service — the negative persona. Thus, they can just focus on the positive persona.
Part 2 — Personas
Our applications goal is to provide users with a collection of potato recipes that are easy to follow, nutritious, and delicious. So we need to understand the needs and preferences of our target audience, which may vary based on factors such as age, occupation, lifestyle, personality, dietary restrictions etc. Let’s take a closer look at two user personas that represent potential users of our Flutter application about potatoes.
1. Ms. Viyazi, Jane
2. Mr. Waaru, Jon
For each application or product, more than one/two personas are usually created. However, only one persona should be the primary focus for the design and the application development.
The two user personas presented in this article; Viyazi and Waaru, demonstrate the importance of understanding the diversity and complexity of the target audience and tailoring the application accordingly. And using these characters, we are now in a position to go to the next phase which is creating scenarios! So be on the lookout for that post.
“I like French fries; I like mashed. I love potatoes.”
― Mary J. Blige
I hope you’ve found this article interesting!
Muchas gracias por leer ❤
PotatoVerse — Ideation:
Check out the first article on this project.
References:
