Primary Personas

Every cast of characters has at least one primary persona. The primary persona is the individual who is the main focus of the design. To be primary, a persona is someone who must be satisfied but who cannot be satisfied with an interface designed for any other persona. An interface always exists for a primary persona. In the Remedy ARS example, Leo Pierce was the primary persona.

Identifying the primary persona or personas is a vital step in the development of a cast of characters. In my experience, each primary persona requires a separate and unique interface. If we identify two primary personas, we will end up designing two interfaces. If we identify three primary personas, we will end up designing three interfaces. If we identify four primary personas, we know that we have a big problem.

If we find more than three primary personas, it means that our problem set is too large and that we are trying to accomplish too much at one time. We create personas to narrow down the spectrum of users for whom we design. It follows that if the number of personas grows too much, we are defeating the purpose of creating personas in the first place.

The cast of characters is not just a convenient phrase; it becomes a physical as well as logical design tool. After winnowing down the population, we typically end up with anywhere from three to seven useful personas. We assemble all of them on a single sheet of paper containing their names, pictures, job descriptions, goals, and often telltale quotes. This one-page document becomes a ubiquitous part of our process. We print out copies of the cast of characters and distribute it at every meeting, whether or not the client is present. Every designer at all of our brainstorming meetings and all of our detailed design meetings has a cast-of-characters document in front of him at all times. When clients attend these meetings, extra copies are printed and presented to them. Every deliverable document that we create and give to our clients has a cast-of-characters page in it. Our goal is to make the personas unavoidable. They are so important that we cram them down everyone's throat.

It does no good to have good design and not express it in terms of the user personas. It is simply too easy to slip back into speaking about "the user" and lose the hard-won focus on specific archetypal users.