“Know thy user, for they are not you.” This has been deemed the ‘unofficial mantra of User-Centered Design’.  I could not have put it better myself.  Wouldn’t you think that for USER-centered design that the USER might be a part of the process?  Every single person is different.  What might work and be super easy for someone might not be for someone else.  This is why it is important for designers to know who they are directing their product towards.

This isn’t to say that every single person should be catered to.  (Though wouldn’t that be nice?).  It’s to say that if a product is aimed for middle schoolers, the creators need to get in their minds and understand what they truly want or need and how they might respond to certain elements.  For example, they would be more likely to be attracted to bright color schemes than pastels, which adults might be more drawn to.  While this principle might not apply to every single middle schooler that may use the product, as long as the net is cast wide enough for a majority of them it is a good starting point.  Features and elements and be fine-tuned from there.

A popular way to get in the minds of the target audience is to create a comprehensive persona.  It is coming up with hypothetical people who would be the ideal, or maybe not so ideal, users of the platform.  A helpful tool is to describe yourself as well in order to compare how you view certain things versus the hypothetical users might perceive things.

Personally, I struggled a lot with doing this.  We were tasked to create one hypothetical user along with ourselves and describe our interactions with one of the websites we had worked with previously (found here).  I have never been good with hypotheticals.  Playing ‘pretend’ was never my strong suit as a child.  So, coming up with a whole person, essentially, using a website different from how I would, was difficult for me.  I think it might have been a different experience for me if it had to do with something I had actually created or designed.  It was hard enough filling out my own section!

Anyways, I was able to struggle through and come up with somewhat realistic (I hope) components for myself and some random person (that I named Jane Doe, by the way) using this website.  I chose to focus on Canvas which is a strictly educational platform for students and teachers/professors.  Since I am a student, I didn’t have much of a choice as to what role Jane Dow would take on.  She’s a professor.  Going through the provided worksheet had us thinking about the motivations and behaviors, influencers and the environment in which each of these people are using said platform.

Overall, while it was difficult for me to come up with traits for both users, once I had them down, I could see how this worksheet would help a creator or designer get in the mindset of their clientele.  It was very thorough and gave insights that most people probably wouldn’t even think about when it comes to user-centered design.  

            Here is the full document: