Get To Know Your Learner By Developing Personas (4 of 9)

ResourcesLX Design

Oct 10

Once you have defined your learner journey, and evaluated previous iterations, it is important to get to know your learners. Personas are one way to gain insights into your learners so you design for their wants and needs rather than what you think their wants and needs are. After all, if you don’t know who you are designing for, you are setting your experience up for failure.

What are learner personas?

The term ‘personas’ was developed by Alan Cooper who described them as a way of summarising the key attributes of different user groups that can be used by the design team (1999). They are adopted from the UX disciple and are predominantly used to answer the question ‘who are you designing for?’ (Adobe, 2019). By understanding key behaviours of users including motivation, frustrations, expectations, and needs; you are able to design a product that will address the users’ needs. The difference with learner personas, is that you are not designing for software, but rather a learner experience. There is a lot of different information out there about what you should include, and I have found there is no ‘one best way’, but rather look at your context, what you need to know and include information that will be helpful for you.

Why should you develop learner personas?

Have you ever completed an online course and thought this is so generic and isn’t really fit for me? Or, have you designed an online course and thought, I don’t really know whether this is going to suit the learners? Learner personas will assist you in this process as it will help you answer ‘why’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ questions throughout the design process. It provides a reference point that you can continually refer back to and ensure you are meeting the learner needs.

How can you use the personas?

As an educator it can be easy to be influenced by what is trending or what you've seen in other courses. For example, you may have seen another course using twitter to build a community of practice so you might want to do the same thing. However, this is looking at a solution you like as an educator rather than the learner needs. In this instance, if building a sense of community was needed, you would go back to your learner personas and ask: how can I build a sense of community to meet the needs of Harvey, Helen, and Phil? This is just one example, other examples could be:

How would Helen think or feel about not having the option to choose different activities?
Why would Harvey progress through the course if there is only a video option?
How are you building a sense of community to eliminate the sense of isolation learners’ feel?
What are Helen and Phil’s underlying needs?
How are you addressing the learner needs throughout this course?

By understanding your learner and coming back to the personas, you will build the best experience for your cohort.

How do you develop learner personas?

Ideally, personas should be developed with information collected through interviews, workshops, and focus groups. In my experience; although this is the ideal, it has not been possible for many reasons. The learner personas I have mostly developed have been in consultation with subject matter experts' and their experience of previous cohorts. I have provided a template that you can use to guide your persona development and amend it for your context. Key things to consider are:

Learner details: name, current industry, and job title
Education and experience: this will help create authentic experiences for the learner
Existing knowledge and skills: what potential support/extension may the learner require?
Motivation to complete the course: what can you embed in your design to maintain motivation in the course?
Potential frustrations: how can you mitigate these potential frustrations to ensure they don’t impact the learner?
Digital literacy: how comfortable is the learner with different technology? This is SO important so you know what support resources need to be developed for your learners.
Family, work, and community commitments: to give you an understanding of how they will be consuming information, when, and potential constraints.
What types of images and information would they find appealing? This will help guide the decision making process when you start choosing different mediums for your context.

I know you are probably thinking that you don’t have time to do this, but I assure you it is a lot quicker than you think. The more expertise you have in this process the easier it will be and you will be surprised how quickly the personas form. If time is a constraint for you, I assure you, the time you take now to develop these will save you time in the design process.

How many learner personas do you need?

There are many different ideas on how many personas you need; however, I have found completing at least 3 at the beginning of any design session will provide a solid foundation that you can design from.

Summary

Personas are adopted from the UX discipline and used to define who you are designing for. By developing these, they provide you with insights to help you make informed, learner-centered decisions throughout the design process.

Next steps

By now you should have a good idea what learner personas are, why you need them and how to get started. So, if you haven’t already, download the template and get started.