1

MODUL PERKULIAHAN

W182100017 –
UI/UX (LAB)
Konsep Persona

Abstrak Sub-CPMK

Mampu membuat sebuah Sub-CPMK 1 & 3

konsep personas & scenario Kemampuan dalam merancang
sebuah persona dan scenario
berdasarkan sebuah kasus

Metode Persona

Fakultas Program Studi Tatap Muka Disusun Oleh

06
Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Ilmu Komputer Sistem Informasi
The persona method has developed from being a method for IT system development to
being used in many other contexts, including development of products, marketing,
planning of communication, and service design. Despite the fact that the method has
existed since the late 1990s, there is still no clear definition of what the method
encompasses. Common understanding is that the persona is a description of a fictitious
person, but whether this description is based on assumptions or data is not clear, and
opinions also differ on what the persona description should cover. Furthermore, there is
no agreement on the benefits of the method in the design process; the benefits are seen
as ranging from increasing the focus on users and their needs, to being an effective
communication tool, to having direct design influence, such as leading to better design
decisions and defining the product’s feature set (Cooper, 1999; Cooper et al, 2007; Grudin
& Pruitt, 2002; Long, 2009; Ma & LeRouge, 2007; Miaskiewicz & Kozar, 2011; Pruitt &
Adlin, 2006).

A persona is not the same as an archetype or a person. The special aspect of a persona
description is that you do not look at the entire person, but use the area of focus or
domain you are working within as a lens to highlight the relevant attitudes and the specific
context associated with the area of work.

30.1 An example persona

Dorte is 53 years old and works as a secretary in her husband’s plumbing business in the
suburbs of Copenhagen. There are 5-6 assistants and apprentices in the company.

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

2 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
Background

When Dorte was very young she trained as an office clerk in the accounts department in a
department store in Copenhagen. She was married at the age of 21 to Jan who had just
got his skilled worker’s certificate. They have two grown-up sons who no longer live at
home in the combined house and workshop/office. Their sons visit frequently as they still
enjoy mum’s cooking.

Dorte likes to keep up with fashion. She often goes to the hairdresser, loves vibrant
colours and elegant shoes. When she reads women’s magazines, she looks for small tips
that she changes and makes her own. She is always smartly dressed and stays fit.

Dorte loves travelling to faraway countries; most recently, she and her family were on a
trip to Vietnam this summer. Before they went, she spent time reading up on the country
and also watched the film Indochine starring Catherine Deneuve. Dorte always discusses
the vacations with Jan, who would prefer to go to Rhodes with old friends, but it is Dorte
who has the final say about the destination.

In an average day, she tends to drink too many cups of coffee, and when the telephone
rings all the time and she can’t reach the assistants, she also tends to smoke a bit too
much.

Dorte makes payments to the Danish early retirement benefit scheme and looks forward
to the day where she no longer has to be the “mum” of others any more and can spend
more time travelling.

Computer use

Dorte does the accounts and the bookkeeping, VAT, taxes, vacation pay, the Danish
Labour Market Supplementary Pension ATP, etc. She uses a mini financial management
system that she has mastered after many years of use, but sometimes the system is not
completely logical.

If she were to use other systems or use new, digital reporting, she would prefer it to be
demonstrated to her by someone. She feels unable to learn something new when it is just
explained to her, and she dislikes reading user guides. She says it takes her a long time

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

3 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
 to study anything new and familiarise herself with it, and she tends to see more limitations
than possibilities in new IT. Dorte often underestimates her IT proficiency and
overestimates the time that it will take to learn something new, so she stalls before she
even gets started.

If she needs IT help, her oldest son and, less often, a woman friend provide the support.
The friend works in a big company and is a super-user of the financial management
software.

Reporting

Dorte handles the tax cards for the business. She deals with and reports the wages,
vacations, sickness benefits, and maternity leaves of the staff. She does the VAT returns
and annual accounts of the company. In addition, she fills in the reports for Statistics
Denmark and the Employer’s Reimbursement System AER.

Dorte does not understand the logic of the IT system and does not trust everything to
happen as it should. If she sends in a return form or report digitally, she likes a
confirmation saying that the recipient has received the form.

Her workday:

 She is not involved in the plumbing business as a trade, but she knows all the
technical terms.

 She tidies things up. She does not want the others (her husband and the
assistants) to make a mess in the basement where the office is as she is the one who has
to look at it all day “Tidy up! Your mum does not work here!”

 She digs in and sometimes has to keep far too many balls in the air at the same
time.

 She holds the fort, but does not get a lot of professional recognition in the
company from the boss/her husband.

 She answers the telephone, handles mail, deliveries of goods (including invoices
and delivery letters), and email.

 She handles the accounts, does some bookkeeping and writes invoices.

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

4 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
 She makes the coffee.

 She has occasional contact with the accountant.

 She does the invoicing of clients.

 She sends/delivers mail every day.

 She sends reminders.

 She handles customer contact (including damage control).

 She also walks the dog.

Future goals

Dorte dreams about a future where she no longer has to work and where she can spend
more time travelling. She is still debating with Jan whether they should travel or buy a
summer cottage where they can live all year round when they retire.

The persona approach stems from IT system development where in the late 1990s many
researchers had begun reflecting on how you could communicate an understanding of the
users. In literature, various concepts emerged, such as user archetypes, user models,
lifestyle snapshots, and model users — as I termed it when I first wrote about the method
in 1997. In 1999, Alan Cooper published his tremendously successful The Inmates are
Running the Asylum (Cooper, 1999) where the persona as a concept to describe fictitious
users was introduced for the first time. Despite the fact that a vast number of articles
about using personas have been written, there is no unilateral understanding of the
application of the method nor a definition of what a persona description is.

30.2 Four different perspectives

The literature today offers four different perspectives regarding personas: Alan Cooper’s
goal-directed perspective; Jonathan Grudin, John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin’s role-based
perspective; the engaging perspective that I myself use, which emphasizes how the story
can engage the reader (Sønderstrup-Andersen, 2007); and the fiction-based perspective.
The first three perspectives agree that the persona descriptions should be founded on
data. However, the fourth perspective, the fiction-based perspective, does not include
data as the basis for persona description, but creates personas from the designers’
intuition and assumptions; they have names such as ad hoc personas, assumption
personas, and extreme characters.

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

5 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
  30.2.1 The goal-directed perspective

 30.2.2 The role-based perspective

 30.2.3 The engaging perspective

 30.2.4 The fiction-based perspective

 30.2.5 Other perspectives

 30.2.6 Criticism

 30.3 The use of personas

I now provide a brief introduction to why the persona method is a useful design tool, what
personas are used for, how they are constructed, how to use them, and what to consider
in the communication of personas.

In the design process, we begin to imagine how the product is to work and look before any
sketch is made or any features described. If the design team members have a number of
persona descriptions in front of them while designing, the personas will help them
maintain the perspective of the users. The moment the designers begin to imagine how a
possible product is to be used by a persona, ideas will emerge. Thus, I maintain that the
actual purpose of the method is not the persona descriptions, but the ability to imagine the
product. In the following, I designate these product ideas as scenarios. It is in scenarios
that you can imagine how the product is going to work and be used, in what context it will
be used, and the specific construction of the product. And it is during the work with
developing scenarios that the product ideas emerge and are described. The persona
descriptions are thus a means to develop specific and precise descriptions of products.

A scenario for Virk.dk could be described like this:

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

6 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
Dorte sits at the computer ready to handle the reporting. She goes to Virk.dk and looks at
the front page. Dorte tries to take it all in. It is new and thus a little daunting, but at least it
looks nice with those colours, she thinks, while at the same time she says to herself:
“What do I do now I have installed my signature. I need to find the report form, but where?
Well... look, in the middle of the page is a search box, maybe I can try searching for it.”
Dorte writes “Apprentice refund” in the search field and launches the search. A new
screen appears with a short list of hits. At the top is a link to the form she wanted.

Figure 30.2: Excerpt of scenario for Virk.dk.

In this case, the designers got the idea that there should be a search field in the middle of
the homepage. This would support a shift from information push in the old version of the
webpage to form retrieval in the new version.

Figure 30.3: The front page has an additional search field for Dorte, and focuses on
reporting (2008).

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

7 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
30.3.1 Personas for IT and for products

When personas are used for IT system development, it is mainly to explore interaction
and navigation. On the other hand, they are not suited to describing what kind of
information the system is to contain. For Virk.dk, four personas were created. One of
these personas, Jesper, is an accountant. Jesper represents all the users reporting for
other companies, not, however, including for example agricultural consultants. When
Jesper is used in the scenario, he illustrates what demands those who report on behalf of
companies have of the product, both how they think and how they would like to see the
information presented. But Jesper does not represent what information and reporting
forms should be available on the site. If he did, there would be no reporting forms for
agricultural consultants.

In IT systems development, there are specific methods to describe the system navigation
and interaction e.g. Unified Modelling Language or the user stories within agile
development methods, where the scenarios are described in illustrated and narrative
stories. It is quite easy to insert the personas into these methods.

As the persona method developed from a method for IT system development to also
working within product development, a shift in the method occurred that has had an
impact on how the method is used and what it can be used for. When personas are used
for product development, the scenario takes a different path. Here, the users’ processes
and interactions with the product can more easily be understood as role-playing and story-
boarding, and the ways of capturing ideas are less formalized.

30.3.2 4 areas of importance, 10 steps to follow

The persona is ideally shaped according to user studies, and used for ideation. But the
process varies; sometimes the idea comes first, and the persona is created later and used
to verify or enrich the idea (Chang et al., 2008). Studies have shown that one of the main
difficulties in the method is to get project participants to use it (Browne, 2011). In the
following, I present a process model that sets out to cover this problem throughout the
process. It contains four different main parts: data collection and analysis of data (steps 1,
2), persona descriptions (steps 4, 5), scenarios for problem analysis and idea
development (steps 6, 9), and acceptance from the organization and involvement of the
design team (steps 3, 7, 8, 10).

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8 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
 Figure 30.4: The poster covers 10 Steps to Personas

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

9 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/
Daftar Pustaka

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-
interaction-2nd-ed/personas

2021 UI/UX (LAB)

10 Dr. Misbahul Fajri, ST., MTI
Biro Bahan Ajar E-learning dan MKCU
http://pbael.mercubuana.ac.id/