The Cast of Characters

We give every project its own cast of characters, which consists of anywhere from 3 to 12 unique personas. We don't design for all of them, 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. In one project, for example, our project concerned a technical help-desk management system. We defined three people, two of them in-house help-desk technicians. Leo Pierce was a marketing assistant in the company's product division. He used a computer in his daily work and was occasionally a consumer of help-desk services. Alison Harding was a company technician whose job entailed going from office to office with her aluminum tool case, fixing technical problems for the likes of Leo. Ted van Buren was a help-desk representative who spent his day answering phone calls from people like Leo and dispatching Alison to Leo's office to fix his computer.

Our client, Remedy Inc, was revising its flagship product, Action Request System (ARS), and wanted to make it "easier to use." By developing these three personas (and a few others), we could clearly articulate what the goals of the project really were.

Ted was the main user of the current version of ARS, but he wasn't our primary persona. Although we would make operating the program easier for Ted, we would have failed in our job if that was all we accomplished. Instead, we were making the help-desk system directly accessible to Leo. Formerly, if Leo needed help, he had to telephone Ted, who would dispatch Alison. The full cast of characters articulated very clearly who the players were. This let us communicate to all the engineers that our goal could only be achieved if Leo, the low-tech marketing wonk, could use the ARS system on his own computer to summon technical help without Ted's intervention.

As soon as we could explain this situation in terms of personas, the team members immediately understood that they needed to deemphasize Ted and concentrate all of their efforts on Leo. Ted occupies a role we call a negative persona. His existence helps us to understand whom we are not designing for.

We know that we have isolated a persona when we have discovered a person whose goals are unique. It isn't necessary that all of the persona's goals be different, but that its set of objectives is clearly different from everyone else's. Raul, who assembles lawnmowers on an assembly line, has different goals from Cicely, his production supervisor. Cicely wants to improve overall productivity and avoid accidents. Raul wants to get a reasonable quantity of work done without making any embarrassing mistakes. Although they share practical goals, their motivations are quite different. Raul wants stability. Cicely wants a promotion. Clearly, their goals are sufficiently different to demand the establishment of two separate personas.