Automobiles, personas and UX
The New York Times ran an article in its weekly automobiles section this weekend on Ford’s use of personas in designing the new Fiesta.
“ANTONELLA is an attractive 28-year old woman who lives in Rome. Her life is focused on friends and fun, clubbing and parties,” the article begins. “She is also completely imaginary. But her influence is definitely real.”
I read this with a smirk, because Ai, and many of our wise peers, use personas in web design all the time. Whether formal or informal, it’s part of the user-centric design process that defines our work.
Personas (a word the Times didn’t use) are depictions of typical users of a product or, for us, a website. They provide a brief but defining sketch of a hypothetical individual whose needs and opinions are crucial to a project’s success.
On complex projects, Ai crafts a robust personas brief. It defines the main demographic and psychographic users of a website, and allows our teams to think as our targets think as we do our work.
Personas are just as important on smaller projects. While we might not formalize our personas work, we place the users front and center in our discovery research, asking: who is this site targeting? And how do these people achieve success?
Ford’s use of personas is not remarkable–it’s sensible, and a promising sign for America’s last major automaker.