TAO/Creating Personas and Working with Them

Goal of the Learning Module
Explain the concept of personas, give instructions how to create them, give examples for their use in the context of TAO.

Target group(s)
People engaging in product or service design. Users intending to create their own learning module.

Introduction
In marketing and user-centered design, personas are fictional characters created to represent different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a service or product in a similar way. Personas are used as a tool or method for market segmentation and user-centered design.

Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of costumers and users in order to help to guide decisions about a service, product or interaction space. By fostering empathy among the design team, they help the team to avoid designing the product or service according to their own needs and expectations. Furthermore, by making assumptions about the users transparent, they allow for an open discussion and questioning of stereotypes, based on empirical research.

Learning Units

 * Unit 1: Create your own personas

Results

 * Personas