Personas Worksheet

For class purposes, you might consider searching photos at:

• Flickr’s Creative Commons Pool
• Open Photo

Be specific

Exact age
General Educational Level: high school, some college, college grad, etc

M/F;  Young, middle-aged, older, single/married/divorced, with/without children/without children under 18, etc.

Urban, suburban, rural 
Apartment, condo/townhouse, single-family home; renter vs. owner

Professional and technical, managers, officials, proprietors, clerical, sales, craftspeople, supervisors, farmers, retired, students, homemakers, unemployed, etc

Lower lowers – 7% lowers – On welfare or have “the dirtiest” jobs, visibly poverty-stricken.
Upper lowers – 9% – Working but just above poverty level.
Working class – 38% – Those who lead a “working-class lifestyle” regardless of income, education or job.
Middle class – 32% – Average-pay white- and blue-collar workers who live on “the better side of town.”
Upper middle class – 12% – Typically careerists, possessing neither family status nor unusual wealth.
Lower uppers – 2% – Typically the nouveau riche who possess wealth through exceptional ability in their profession or business.
Upper uppers – <1% – “Old money” social elite.

Compulsive, gregarious, relaxed, class-clown, perfectionist, artistic

Consistent favorable/unfavorables evaluations, feelings or tendencies toward an object or ideas. For example: “Always buy the best.”

Any social-cultural issues regarding the task/usage to be taken into account? What expectations, desires, policies, values are relevant?

Principle-oriented: Thinkers, believers – Place importance on abstract or idealized criteria rather than feelings, emotions or desire for social approval.
Status-oriented: Innovators, achievers, strivers, survivors – Strive for clear social position, place importance on opinions of others.
Action-oriented: Experiencers, makers – Driven by desire for activity, variety and risk-taking.

What interests or activities does this person pursue in their spare time?

Expert, skilled, adept, acceptable, stumbler, unskilled

Latest & Greatest, multimedia, business, basic home use, older basic, antique

What does the persona commonly use the Internet for? Email, news, file sharing, etc.

Non-user, ex-user, potential user, first-time user, regular user

Light user, medium user, heavy user

None, weak, medium, strong, absolute

What do users really want to accomplish regardless of the specific tasks they use to reach the goal.

Usually unstated, these are emotional overtones accompanying specific usage goals, which when satisfied cause a product to resonate with users. While these are most obvious in consumer-facing products, these can be just as important for internal applications. They include:

Learning – Gaining knowledge or mastery
Doing – Engaging in desired action or activity
Believing – Having faith or confidence, in a product, brand, company, cause, etc.
Becoming – Personal self-transformation
Entertaining – Being delighted, charmed, captivated
Belonging – A sense of connection to a group

Do users do the task/use the product by themselves, or as part of a group? How much time is allowed? Is the task completed/product used in one sitting or over time? Is it done regularly or only on special occasions? Etc.

Does the user have any accessibility issues?