Purpose

A persona is a user archetype that is used to assist in making decisions about product features, navigation, interaction, and visual design. Through designing for a specific and well designed persona, we can satisfy an even larger group of users who are represented by the persona.

Process

When designing for a persona, we revisited our directed storytelling data to betterunderstand the common and distinct elements of our users. In particular, we attempted to understand their goals, cooking patterns, and personalities. From this analysis, we created a chart of potential personas based on their experience and web site use patterns.

We felt that "User 1" and "User 2" were the most representative and interestng based on our prior research. From there we iteratively created personas, strongly based on their goals and desires. We named our persona based on "User 1", Josh, and our persona based on "User 2", Margo.

Personas

Josh

Josh is a lab technician at a biotech startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His company recently had an IPO, and while his mid-level job meant that he didn't get fabulously rich when the company went public, he still ended up with more money than he expected to have at 25. He has just moved out of an apartment he shared with an old friend from college into a new condo by himself.

Along with more breathing room, Josh finally gets a well equipped kitchen. Raised by a single parent, Josh frequently helped his mom in the kitchen. Since he moved out of her house, she’s been sending him recipes on 3x5 cards which he’s been experimenting with and storing in a recipe box.

Josh tries to live an active lifestyle, going sailing and playing basketball with his friends whenever he gets the chance. He recently took up skiing, and met a cute girl, Janice, in a ski class in Vermont. She was a little out of his league, but his goofy mistakes on the slopes made her laugh, and he got her number after finding out that they both live in Boston. They've been on a couple of dates so far, and things are looking up.

Margo

Margo works in public relations for a chain of health food stores based out of Seattle. Growing up in Oregon, her parents participated in community farming co-ops so she’s used to cooking healthy dishes with organic produce. Her parents and grandparents have a rich history of creating and customizing recipes, and she has family recipe books that span two generations.

Margo loves to cook as well, but she tends to experiment far more than her parents and grandparents did, mixing ethnic cuisine and novel ingredients with her family's traditional organic american flavors. She often calls her aunt, who shares her tastes in food, for recipe advice.

Margo likes the outdoors: hiking and kayaking especially. She has a group of friends that get together to go hiking, to play cards, or just to sit on her patio and talk. They frequently cook for each other, and Margo enjoys impressing them with her novel recipes.