Design ≠ Bias

How do you design without bias? How do you design without creating a product based on your own concepts and interest? You design without projection by using user personas. Designers use personas to “avoid projection, create empathy, and focus on the few rather than the many (Wick, 2017)” when designing a product.  Some may define personas as archetypes that characterize the need, goals, technical experience, accessibility requirements, and other personal characteristics of a larger group of people (Lilley et al, 2012).  When I started my E-learning course, based on the feedback I would receive for my peers and instructor, I wondered if my designs where based on my interpretation of design concepts rather than the end user.  I now understand personas are used to incorporate focus and empathy and basically provide a prototype of fictitious users to keep all parties involved on the same page. (Nodder, 2016) (Wick, 2017) As Lilley et al (2012) states personas “…  provides a richer account of learners and makes it much easier for designers and developers to keep the learners in mind when they are working.”

Designing my personas this week, I now understand the importance of having background and demographic information.  I developed both of my personas based on “Ad-hoc (Lilley et all, 2012)” personas or as Nodder (2016) calls it “assumption” personas.  This allowed me to create these personas based on my perceptions because I did not have acceptable data, however it was a starting point.  The next step, if this was in real-time, I would need to used “data gathering questions, learning platform data, and demographics (Baumann, 2018) or online surveys and interviews as mentioned in (Lilley et al, 2012).  Overall, the use of personas is a great tool to use when developing products such as training learning objects as “…persona helps shift the e-Learning design process away from what will best suit the business to a more learner-centered approach and what will best fit the learner (Gutierrez, 2013).

Baumann, B. (2018, March 29).  User-Centered Design Through Learner Personas. Training Industry. https://trainingindustry.com/articles/content- development/user-centered-design-through-learner-personas/

Gutierrez, K. (2013, July 04). The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Creating Learner Personas. SHIFT eLearning. https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/bid/302513/The-Ultimate-Cheat-Sheet-for-Creating-Learner-Personas

Lilley, M., Pyper, A., & Attwood, S. (2012). Understanding the Student Experience through the Use of Personas. ITALICS: Innovations in Teaching & Learning in Information & Computer Sciences, 11(1), 4–13. https://doi-org.saintleo.idm.oclc.org/10.11120/ital.2012.11010004

Nodder, C. (2016, September 22). UX Design: 3 Creating Personas. LinkedIn Learning.  https://www.lynda.com/User-Experience-tutorials/UX-Design-Techniques-Creating-Personas/490663-2.html?srchtrk=index%3a5%0alinktypeid%3a2%0aq%3abuilding+personas%0apage%3a1%0as%3arelevance%0asa%3atrue%0aproducttypeid%3a2

Wick, A. (2017, March 4).  Agile Product Owner Role: Techniques. LinkedIn Learning. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/agile-product-owner-role-techniques/personas