Personas for product development

What are personas?
Personas are design tools to help product teams focus their solutions, products, features, etc. around the kind of person they are designing and building for. Personas remind teams about the needs, contexts, capabilities, challenges and goals, of the personas. Personas are not profiles of individuals, but rather, archetypes of motivations, observed behaviors. Each persona describes a group of people with similar goals, motivations and behaviors. Personas help teams focus decisions around the needs, and solving the challenges of the humans they are designing and building with and for.

Further reading on Personas and their use —


 * Personas - A simple introduction
 * Putting Personas to Work in UX Design
 * A Closer Look At Personas: What They Are And How They Work

1. Pragmatic Personas
Status: Study complete

Pragmatic personas are built quickly from what is known (for example: self report surveys, academic research, and quantitative data) and acknowledging what is not known. The benefit of pragmatic personas is that they can be created more quickly than personas based on research (qualitative research triangulated with any segmentation that is available). Drawbacks of pragmatic personas, are that they are not created from primary research, and so are more guesswork than personas that are based in qualitative research. These pragmatic personas were created in 2015.

2. New Readers
Audience segment: New Readers

Region of study: Nigeria and India

Status: Study complete

In Spring of 2016, Design Research team, Global Partnerships, Communications and the Reading team partnered to implement two contextual inquiries (one in Nigeria and one in India) in partnership with Reboot (a design research firm) to learn about new and potentially new readers. These personas are directly from that research, and are being used by the New Readers team, various other teams in the Wikimedia Foundation, and teams in Nigeria and India. Here, you can see the New Readers research, team and work being done.

3. New Editors
Audience segment: New Editors

Region of study: Czech Republic and South Korea

Status: Study complete

In the Spring of 2017, a team was formed to implement another contextual inquiry, this time, about new editors, and their experiences in becoming (or not) productive contributors to Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation teamed up with Reboot again, and went to South Korea and the Czech Republic to learn from new editors about their experiences. The goal is to better understand and try to improve the experiences of new editors, since many of them start, and then stop. Here, you can find information about the new editor experiences research, and follow on work. The personas below, are a deliverable from the New Editor Experiences research in South Korea and Czech Republic. They are being used within the Audiences teams, and other teams at the Wikimedia Foundation.

4. Mobile users
Audience segment: Readers, Casual Editors

Region of study: United States

Status: Study complete

In summer 2018, the Foundation teamed up with Logic Department to research and formulate United States-based mobile personas. The research project aimed to evaluate mobile readers and contributors' assumptions, behaviors, interactions and reactions to the various modes of interaction users can have with Wikipedia on mobile. The personas below are deliverables from the Mobile Personas research in the United States. They are being used within the Audiences and other teams at the Wikimedia Foundation. Read more about the mobile personas research project and the project findings.

Region of study: India

Status: Study in-progress

We're in the process of conducting similar research project in India. The foundation is teamed up with Hureo, a user research firm based in Pune, India.