COS70004- USER CENTERED DESIGN

TOPIC: PERSONAS
STUDENT NAME: MEGHANATHA REDDY YERUVA
TUTOR: KABERI NAZNIN
WORD COUNT: 1605

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1-2
Body ................................................................................................................................................. 2
Creating Persona ...................................................................................................................... 2
How to Create Persona ............................................................................................................. 3
Persona in Medical field........................................................................................................ 3-4
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 4
References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5

Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5

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Introduction
Personas represent the group of people in a place and which type they are like
they are employees, or they are customers. Personas focuses on everything of
group like what are their needs and their types of behaviour and their hopes
towards a product or service.
Personas helps us to find the different group of people with similar behaviour
that they need similar type of services
In Personas firstly we have to figure out what we have to learn about our
customers for example on a service or product, different customers have
different types of hopes on it. Firstly, we have to know about what hopes they
have on that product or service and what types expectations they have and what
goals they have on that product and how the product is helpful to them.
In Personas if we are ready with our requirements then we have to interact with
our customer to know about expectations and needs and what type of services
they are expecting from the Organization and which type of features they are
expecting from developers and what they are more concerned about.

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Once completion of interacting with customers we will getting to know about
their needs with the information we have. We can prepare template for customer
based their needs and sorting out with an exact output what they expected.
Normally we can create a Personas on a group of customers with their details
which include
1.Name
2.Age
3.Gender
4.Income
5.Country
6.Profession

Body
Personas are very useful in any type of Organization because it is the basic
ground work of any project or designing an equipment. If we include Personas
in project then we have to interact with the customers and developers to meet
our requirements. Particularly in User Centered Design using Personas will help
in many ways before like how to start for a work or like what is the main goal
of our project. By creating Personas it creates some visions for a project. Mainly
we are using personas during development of a product because during that
stage we interface the product with customers and knowing their views and
expectations towards the product or service. There are some drawbacks by using
Personas. The main problem of using personas is the designer have to think
from two perspectives .while developing a product one is from developer point
of view and another is from customer point of view. Another drawback is after
interacting with the customers the developer has to proirtize the views of
customer it was some difficult because developer will be in confusion state for
priortizing the user views and expectations . During software design the
developers invoked personas less than expected(Matthews et al.,2012)

Creating Personas

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While creating Personas the first thing we need to do is to Interview Customers
and employees and professional developers. By using persona we can create a
profile or a template in an organization such as from employees, customers,
developers,and users.

How to Create Persona?

Creating Personas involves some major steps which have to followed
compulsorily. They are
1. Firstly we have to figure out what we are going to learn about our
customers
2. Simply interact with customersing better and the professionals who will
be having knowledge on that field on the basis of interview and collect
the data from the customers about their views, expectations and what they
are worried about the product or service
3. Once after the completion of interview if we are ready with our answers
which are collected from the customers then we can figureout the
information we had.
4. Now we can use personas here by using some tempaltes or by creating
our own personas by writing all the details of a customers and their views
and worries on a paper or on a notepad.
5. The above personas should consits the Customer Quote, their
demonstration and their views towards the product and what are the
problems they suffered from past product or service.

Personas in Medical field:

Personas have a great scope in medical field because while designing or
developing medical equipment they have to consider lot of things like is their
developing equipment will meet the requirements of user and it has to meet the
doctor’s requirements. By considering persona in medical field developers have
to interview Users, Doctors and employment team too. Then the developers will
be coming to know about the requirements to meet while developing the
medical equipment. Different Users and Doctor’s will be having different types
of ideas and expectations towards the product. All those have to listed by using

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persona or by creating a draft by using pen and paper. In medical device
manufacturing felid manufacturers has to be more careful and they have to think
from doctors perspective and users perspective. Because a doctor knows about
medical devices and their working conditions and their tensile strength. So, if a
manufacturer consider persona in his project he can interview both doctors and
users, there he will be coming to know about the apparatus and worries of
doctors and users towards product.
Source: “The Challenges of delivering validated Personas for medical
equipment design” by Christopher James Vincent and Ann Blandford in
2014.
In my field that is in medical equipment designing field Personal are useful
because by using personas developers and Organization will be getting to know
what are the requirements they have to meet and what should be outcomes of
the product. I recommend using Personas to my team because after considering
personas in the product designing or developing process will be quite easier
because the developers have already set of goals to meet. While designing a
medical equipment, developers have to be more careful because one medical
equipment deals with many of human being lives. Once after releasing into the
market if it not works properly it may lead to serious injuries to a person or it
may lead to a death. So, while designing or developing a medical equipment
considering Personas will be more helpful because developers will be already
interacted with the doctors, so they will be coming to know that their designing
product to be met all those requirements such as, It should work any type of
environments, it should be capable of resisting at higher power and finally it
should be reliable.

Conclusion:
A persona is a type of representation of a specific customer or user segment of a
product or of a service that you are going to design or develop. For a product or
service lot of personas will be created in order to meet the different
requirements and goals set by users.
There will be both advantages and disadvantages while considering personas in
a product or service, then if advantages outweigh the disadvantages then it will
a good decision to consider a persona in that specific project. In my project that
is in medical equipment manufacturing it is good to use personas because
manufactures will be having predefined set of goals and vision. In User Centred
Design, Persona has its own importance during user interface of a project. In

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personas there will be some predefined steps while designing or manufacturing
a product, so it will be quite easy for a manufacturer. It is good to be consider
personas in my project until unless it has more advantages than disadvantages,
because manufacturer has to know about his requirements for the products he
will be getting to those after considering persona in this project.
By using personas, it will be easier to separate the details of audience because
while doing an interview we will be interacting with lot of users and
professionals to know their goals, expectations and worries about project. It will
be quite difficult to remember all those ideas, so if we use persona it will be
much easier to filter all those ideas and views into specific category.

References:
1. Pruitt and Grudin (2003).
2. Applied Ergonomics volume 45, Issue4, pp1097-1105.

Executive Summary:
In this project that is manufacturing of medical devices we have research on
using of persona in medical equipment manufacturing. Firstly, I came to know
about the Personas and their structure. Later about how personas are used and
their creation. On the other hand, knowing their pros and cons using in medical
field. There will some predefined methods to create personas which will be
useful to collect the data from the users and professionals in particular fields
and making that into a synthesized data making the process quite easier to
manufacturer or to developer while designing the product. By using personas, it
will be very clear to manufacturer to know his possibilities about product.
Personas helps in understanding the users and their views and expectations
towards the product or service. Several Organizations encourage the promoting
of personas in their projects because by considering personas in their product
manufacturing it gives clear outline about the product which makes the
manufacturing process quite easier. While creating personas first figure out
views of specific audience about their expectations and worries towards product
and gaining professional knowledge about the product. While considering
persona in a product manufacturing there will be both advantages and
disadvantages. To summarize, I recommend to use personas in my field that is
in manufacturing medical equipment because the advantages of personas
outweigh the disadvantages.

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