by For one of my assignments, I was tasked to create two personas from the results of my research, along with additional outside research with data from the Pew Research Center, for my digital project that I’m creating. Making references from our readings, examples, and specific user research, these two personas were created to simulate a realistic person that would find interest in my project. Each persona would represent a type of audience that I’m appealing to, a primary audience (someone in my field) and a secondary audience (someone unfamiliar with my field). These personas will be used further as a check and a guide for future assignments, such as storyboarding, selecting materials, and drafting content for your project.
That being said, there is much I learned from creating these personas. Both of my personas represented the types of audiences that we learned about for our projects. One such persona represents a professor who works in Medieval and Mediterranean Studies at George Mason University, while the other persona represents an amateur YouTuber and streamer who lives in southern Italy. Upon further research, I was able to highlight some revisions that I’d like to make for both personas that can affect both my understanding of the assignment, as well as how my project aims to answer critical questions my audience may have.
For my first persona, the professor, I want to revise his end goals for wanting to pursue exploring my project. While I think the end goal is straight to the point, there needs to be more specifics and questions that need to be answered. While I believe my project would provide the answers he needs, I do not believe it answers all the questions that would convince him to explore the project further for his answers. Two questions stick out to me when thinking about my audience: “Will this serve the needs of my users?” and “How will my users interact with this material?”. With that, I want to revise this persona’s end goal to reflect what his questions are when pursuing my project, specifically what he wants to look for and what resources he can use to achieve it.
For my second persona, the streamer, I also want to expand his end goal. Unlike my professor persona, this persona needs to focus on some basic-to-intermediate level knowledge in his topic of his home region of southern Italy. My using the multicultural aspects of the Normans, I believe part of his end goal is already achieved. However, I find a lack of answering what tools he can use to further expand his knowledge for creating future historical videos. With that in mind, I wish to revise this persona’s end goal by further elaborating on tools that he can use to achieve his goal. These tools can include reference videos, discussion posts, and even trivia games that can make his learning experience fun and interactive.
In conclusion, each persona I created was the easy part. However, expanding on their end goals turned out to be more difficult than expected. With that in mind, I had to result to going back to the basics of what my project aims to answer and use. By understanding what my audiences are seeking with my project, I can maximize the project to its furthest potential with what it can do for everyone who wishes to utilize it. For me, this may also mean burying my darlings and understanding that some things that I prefer for the project may need to be revised or removed for the sake of the audience having a better experience overall. These are just some of the things I’ve learned throughout my experiences creating and revising my personas.
