An Iterative Approach to Scenarios and Personas

Great design anticipates the users’ needs. It matches what the user is trying to accomplish.

Not all people have the same needs, even if they desire the same outcome. The variations between users and how they go about achieving their objectives can be subtle and nuanced. Teams need to have a clear picture of those variations to design for users who require different things.

Scenarios and personas work best when they provide the team with a detailed understanding of who the users are and what those users need. The scenarios and personas function as a role-playing tool, showing designers where their design works well and where it could still use improvement.

The trap: The all-at-once approach.

A common trap that design teams run into is when they make their scenario and persona efforts as a single phase of the project. They spend whatever limited research budget they have all at once, trying to produce a single set of definitive documentation that describes their identified scenarios and personas.

This all-at-once approach does the opposite of the team’s intention. It creates a limited, static view of the users and their needs. That view is not supposed to change for the duration of the project.