We recently decided to create some personas to aid the design process here at SitePoint. Personas are fictitious representations of your site’s most common users. Admittedly, this is the first time we’ve ever used personas in shaping our design decisions — better late than never!
Read on to learn more about how you could help us improve these personas, and earn yourself a $100 voucher to spend at amazon.com!
Introducing The SitePoint Personas
These personas will be invaluable for helping us shape future versions of sitepoint.com. However, rather than keep them as a purely internal tool, we thought it might be fun to share our personas with you, our readers.
Allow me to introduce, for your reading pleasure, the SitePoint Personas (read the full article or read about the process I followed):
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| Erin Kikuchi the front-end coder |
Samuel Johnson the workaholic business owner |
Raj Sumandra the forum junkie |
Marco Gonzales the rebellious teenager |
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| Harvey Randolph the newbie hobbyist |
Susan Kieslinger the enthusiastic blogger |
Joseph Forrest the Googling geek |
Scott McInnes the visually impaired student |
We’ve also created a short Which Persona Are You? quiz, so you can find out which of these personas you are most like. Note: this is not meant to be a terribly scientific analysis. It’s a fun exercise that some of you will hopefully find interesting, and will help us to validate whether we’ve got it right, or missed the mark completely.
It’s More Interesting when Prizes are Involved
Here’s an incentive to take our personas quiz — do so before September 4th and you’ll go in the draw to win one of five amazon.com vouchers worth $100. Not bad for less than a minute of your time!
On Tuesday September 5th, 2009, five quiz participants will be selected at random, and will receive a $100 voucher to spend at amazon.com.
We’d love to hear what you think of these personas. Did we describe you to a tee? Are there any “typical users” that we’ve glaringly omitted?
Related Links
- Introducing the SitePoint Personas
- Build your Own Data-backed Personas
- The SitePoint Personas Quiz: Which One are You?
You can now easily embed your SitePoint Persona into the sidebar of your blog, if you so choose to! Take the quiz and you’ll be presented with a snippet of HTML that you can copy and paste to proudly tell the world which of these personas you are most like.
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Well, that’s proved it: I’m a workaholic business owner. I’m off for a coffee.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Ditto, Craig…another workaholic business owner checking in. Whoo-hoo!
August 20th, 2009 at 12:26 am
forum junkie…hmmm go figure.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Apparently I’m a googling geek, I notice there is no persona for the technical/back end coder type of person, which I would rate myself as!
August 20th, 2009 at 12:41 am
@Stormrider: Actually, that sounds spot on:
Read more about the Googling geek persona in the article.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Ah, that didn’t come through so well in the brief descriptions shown above, didn’t read the detailed versions!
August 20th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Although I resent being called a Mac user!
August 20th, 2009 at 1:14 am
I’m a googling geek according to the quiz, which is partially true. I’m more of a backend person. My main interest is in databases. And yes, google is a Godsend when searching for error messages and possible solutions.
August 20th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I’m a forum junkie hehe. I don’t have 3,000 posts yet or many friends but I do want to have a sense of belonging in the forums! Perhaps one day! xD Very good article, quiz and process :).
Andrew Cooper
August 20th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Im confused which day is the competition drawn ? On the quiz page it says Tuesday, September 5th, 2009 which is obviously incorrect than it says on this page the Friday the 4th September. I assume this one is correct ?
Anyway Im most like Joseph, except Im a methodical purchaser.
August 20th, 2009 at 9:44 am
@gsoft Apologies—you have until September 4th, then we’ll draw the winners and announce on the 5th. Post updated.
Cheers
August 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
You can now easily embed your SitePoint Persona into the sidebar of your blog, if you so choose to. Take the quiz and you’ll be presented with a snippet of HTML that you can copy and paste to proudly tell the world which of these personas you are most like.
Enjoy!
August 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Good Persona Quiz there!
Well I’m most like Erin (front-end coder), except that I’m a methodical purchaser :)
Ram
August 20th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I’m an Erin – I knew it! Wish I lived in LA though!!!
August 20th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Seems I’m Samuel, the Workaholic Business Owner. No surprise there. Just don’t look for me to be moving to San Francisco…
August 21st, 2009 at 11:15 pm
One other thing – I don’t do Windows. ;)
August 21st, 2009 at 11:19 pm