Peer-graded Assignment: Weekly

challenge 2: Create personas for your

portfolio project
Was due Sep 26, 11:59 PM PDT

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1. Instructions
2. My submission
3. Discussions
Now that you’ve had some practice creating personas for the CoffeeHouse project, you’ll apply
your new skills to your ongoing portfolio project based on the Sharpen prompt you selected. In
this exercise, you’ll create two personas for the app you're designing.

As a reminder, personas are fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs
of a larger group of users. For this activity, you’ll need to identify two distinct user groups, then
create two personas. For larger future projects, you may identify and develop several personas.

You can identify a user group by analyzing the data from user interviews and grouping the
responses into users who share similar interests, goals, or concerns. To get started, you’ll use
the recordings and notes you took during the activity Conduct user interviews for your portfolio
project.

When you review your classmates’ work, consider how personas might help a team better
understand and define their users’ experiences, struggles, and needs.

Review criteria

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Your submission will be assessed out of 15 points using the following criteria:
 2 points: Two personas were created, with each persona representing a different group of
users.
 1 point: Persona one has an image to represent the persona.
 1 point: Persona one has personal and demographic information (age, education, etc.).
 1 point: Persona one has a relevant quote to communicate the persona’s attitude and
personality.
 1 point: Persona one has a list of goals the persona wants to complete.
 1 point: Persona one has a list of frustrations for issues they encounter or try to avoid.
 1 point: Persona one has a brief scenario that conveys the persona’s user journey with
goals, frustrations, and other relevant context.
 1 point: Persona two has an image to represent the persona.
 1 point: Persona two has personal and demographic information (age, education, etc.).
 1 point: Persona two has a relevant quote to communicate the persona’s attitude and
personality.
 1 point: Persona two has a list of goals the persona wants to complete.
 1 point: Persona two has a list of frustrations for issues they encounter or try to avoid.
 1 point: Persona two has a brief scenario that conveys the persona’s user journey with
goals, frustrations, and other relevant context.
 1 point: There are key differences between the two personas to demonstrate that they
represent different groups of users.

Step-By-Step Assignment Instructions

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Step 1: Access the template

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.” 

Link to template:  persona template.

OR 

If you don’t have a Google account, you can download the template directly from the attachment
below.

Google UX Design Certificate - Persona [Template]PPTX File

Download file

Step 2: Analyze your user interviews and identify user groups

Revisit the work you did in the activity Conduct user interviews for your portfolio project. In that
activity, you interviewed 4-6 distinct people who fit your research criteria. You should have a
recording and set of notes for each interview you conducted.

When reviewing your interview recordings and notes, consider gathering some demographic
information, such as:

 Location
 Age range
 Education level
 Employment
 Household/family composition
 Other key personal identifiers 
A great persona includes relevant information about your target user’s life, such as age,
education, location, family situation, occupation, goals, and frustrations. You should also
consider ability, gender, and race in your personas, too. Make sure the information you gather
isn’t used in your persona to reinforce stereotypes. These identifiers give you a well-rounded
idea of who your users are. They also help get you thinking about why these people need your
product.

Study your recordings and notes for patterns and similarities in participant responses. You'll be
sorting them into two groups in the next step.

Note: Remember that for the Conduct user interviews for your portfolio project activity, we
reduced the number of interviewees to 4-6 in total so you could familiarize yourself with the
process. For a real project, you would have at least 4-6 interview subjects for each group of
users (at least 8-12 total). Right now, focus on sorting your interviewees into appropriate
groupings.

Step 3: Build two personas based on your user research for

the Sharpen prompt in your portfolio project
After studying your recordings and notes, decide on at least two distinct user groups. A user
group is a set of people who have similar interests, goals, or concerns.

Once you've decided on your groups, sort your interview recordings and notes into each group
depending on which group they match with the best. In the next steps you'll turn each group into
a persona that is a composite of all the interview participants who fit into that group.

With these two user groups from your portfolio project in mind, use the persona template in Step
1 to build a persona for each of your user groups.
Your goal is to create a realistic representation of a user who you can empathize with as you
think about the design solutions that user might need. For additional guidance, you may refer to
the exemplar from the activity Create personas.

Instructions

For persona one, fill out all of the template elements to get a sense of who your user is and what
drives them. 

 It’s fine to imagine details for the purposes of this activity; however, when constructing
personas in real-life design projects, your personas need to be grounded in the reality of
your research. As you’re distilling information from multiple sources into one persona, you
can create specific details about your persona, so long as those details make sense based
on the research you’ve done. 
 Remember that your persona is a fictional representation inspired by a group of interviews
and not an exact reflection of any single interview or individual. 
 The goals and frustrations sections of the template should highlight the trending goals and
frustrations across all of your interviews.
 Provide a breakdown of the persona’s demographics. You can make these up based on the
type of users in your group of interviews. 
 Include a quote that summarizes your persona’s personality, along with a paragraph
describing their life.
 Include an image or avatar so you have a visual representation. This image or avatar can be
an illustration or a stock photo that captures specific attributes representing the group of
users you based your persona on. Be careful to avoid stereotyping your persona with the
image you choose.
Next, complete the same steps above for your persona two.

Your submission
As you work through creating your personas, ask yourself:

 Did the demographic information match the characteristics derived from the user groups
represented in your interviews?
 Does your quote showcase the persona's personality?
 Were the goals and frustrations aligned with the persona and the activity scenario?
 Were you able to give more information about the persona, tying in their goals and
frustrations, as well as their quote?
 What were the key identifiable differences between your two personas that ensured you
were thinking about different user groups and why did you choose them?
 Did you include a picture or avatar representing the personas for your activity?
When you have completed both personas, upload the files through the My Submission tab at the
top of the page.
After you’ve submitted your own personas, review the work of two of your peers.

Example Submissions

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Here is an example using personas we created for a scenario that asked us to design an app for
a restaurant called Zia’s Pizza. You can read more about Zia's Pizza below:

To view the scenario for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.” 

Link to scenario: Zia’s Pizza business scenario.

OR 

If you don’t have a Google account, you can download the scenario directly from the attachment
below.

Google UX Design Certificate - CoffeeHouse Business Scenario DOCX File

Download file

In our interviews with people who said they were very likely to use a service like Zia’s Pizza app,
we were able to identify the following user groups:

Group 1: Working adults who would like a healthy dinner during the workweek but are not able
to cook most work nights. These users:

 Tend to be more advanced in their careers.

 Often work later hours or have a commute that prevents them from getting home from work
early enough to cook.
 Have additional obligations, interests, or challenges that make it difficult for them to get
groceries for cooking.
 Would use an app to place orders while they are “on the go” and pick up the order on their
way home.
Group 2: Non-native language speakers who strongly prefer to pick up food rather than eat at a
restaurant due to a language barrier. These users:

 Tend to be new residents in the areas that Zia’s Pizza serves and are unfamiliar with local
shopping options.
 Vary in age, occupation, and number of family members in their home.
 Often feel uncomfortable dining in their local restaurants or shopping in their local grocery
stores.
 Would like an app that does not demand advanced English-language experience.
Persona examples
Below you'll find two examples of the personas that were created for Zia’s Pizza. The first is a
working adult who would like a healthy dinner during the workweek but is unable to cook most
work nights. The second is a diner who strongly prefers food pickup over dining in restaurants
due to a language barrier. 
Add to Your Case Study

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After you receive feedback from peers and make revisions, you’re ready to add personas to your
portfolio case study slide deck! Fill out slide #6 with a summary of your user research and slide
#7 with the pain points you uncovered during the research. 

If you need access to the template for the case study slide deck introduced at the beginning of
Course 2, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to template:  Case study slide deck template.

OR 

If you don’t have a Google account, you can download the template directly from the attachment
below.

Google UX Design Certificate - Case study slide deck [Template] PPTX File

Download file

For slide #8, add the persona you want to focus on as you move forward in the design process.
Keep in mind that as you move forward in the program, you’ll need to demonstrate how your
designs solve the persona’s pain points. You’ll come back to add a problem statement to this
slide in a later activity.

To help you get a sense for how slides #6, #7, and #8 might come together, here are examples
of completed slides for Zia’s Pizza:
User research summary slide for Zia's Pizza I conducted interviews and created empathy maps
to understand the users I’m designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified
through research was working adults who don’t have time to cook meals. This user group
confirmed initial assumptions about Zia’s Pizza customers, but research also revealed that time
was not the only factor limiting users from cooking at home. Other user problems included
obligations, interests, or challenges that make it difficult to get groceries for cooking or go to
restaurants in-person.
User research: pain points 1 - Time Working adults are too busy to spend time on meal prep 2 -
Accessibility Platforms for ordering food are not equipped with assistive technologies 3 - IA Text-
heavy menus in apps are often difficult to read and order from