End User Personas
For a definition of "persona", see the glossary. For references about personas, see the list in the Web Design References at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Note: This page was originally created in the context of Cloud4all's Smart House Online Simulation activity, but it can be useful for other activities as well.
GPII Personas
These persons were created for demos at WSIS (April 2012) and the first project review (June 2012).
- Omar - Elderly Person – in SUDAN - Omar/ 50-years old / Sudanese farmer / does not use computers / cannot read
- Timothy - Low Vision [Enlarged Text] - Timothy/ 55-years old / businessman / has low vision
- Nisha - Physical Disability - Nisha / 18-years old / student / has quadriplegia / uses headpointing and on-screen keyboard
- Elaine - Elderly person US - Elaine/ 85-years old / grandmother / does not use computers
- Carla (and carla_24751) - Very Low Vision [Magnifier] - Carla/ 30-years old / software developer/ has very low vision
- Andrei - Blind [Screen reader] - Andrei / 28-years old / lawyer / is blind
- Tim - Cognitive, language, and learning disabilities (Touch and read, read and highlight - different low contrast colors ??????) - Tim/ 12-years old / student / has a learning disability
- Chun - Deaf/HoH [Captions/Transcript] - Chun/ 19-years old / university freshman / is deaf since age 4
The following AEGIS personas (see below) also have a preference set on the GPII Preferences Server:
Personas created in the Prosperity4all project: Developer Space Repository/Personas.
Personas from other projects
- Personas from the AEGIS project: based on user research and available on a Creative Commons licence.
- Personas of Persons with Disabilities: from the Curb Cut blog (11 December 2007)
- Example Personas from Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design (book by Shawn Lawton Henry, 2007)
Note: Some of the AEGIS personas are quite similar to some of the GPII personas; see this e-mail from April 2012.
Personas and Impairments or Needs
Source; Impairments or Needs | Blind | Colour vision deficiency | Needing magnification | Other vision issues | Deaf | Slight/moderate hearing loss | Slight dexterity problems | Moderate dexterity problems | Severe motor problems | Slight cognitive limitation | Moderate/severe cognitive limitation | Aphasia | Stuttering and dysarthria | ADHD | Does not use computers | Cannot read |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPII Persona |
Andrei |
Timothy (low vision); Carla (very low vision) |
Chun |
Nisha (headpointing and on-screen keyboard) |
Tim? |
Elaine (85 years) | Omar (Sudanese farmer) | |||||||||
AEGIS Persona | Paulina Reyes | Nitesh Sarin | Märta Hansson | Tomasa Almaraz | Edward Hodgins/Emma Karlson | Ramin El-Fassi | Caroline Combs/Peter Vandezande | Jane Brown/Mikel Vargas | Adam Ljung/Peter Vandezande | Wayne Edwards | Carlos Portillo/Wayne Edwards | Emma Karlson/Jane Brown | ||||
ACCESSIBLE Persona | Kathleen de Munck (also has extreme light sensitivity) | Maurice Nalobaka (night blindness); David Burt (peripheral vision loss) | Magda Paskimada | Magda Paskimada (also uses AAC) | (Matthew Perkins: Down syndrome) | Andy Catteeuw | ||||||||||
Fluid Project | Sarah Windsor | Christy Gonzola (very low vision; also uses TTS and keyboard) | ||||||||||||||
Just Ask | Roger Thompson (also has slight tremor in right hand) | Kim Callahan (student; Alport Syndrome) | ||||||||||||||
Jasig wiki | Brent Blindman | Clark Colorblind (protanopia) | Melissa Motorimpaired (also uses voice recognition software) | |||||||||||||
project x | ||||||||||||||||
project y | |
Other personas not included in the table:
From the ACCESSIBLE project:
- John Howard Jones: Parkinson's disease, affecting short term memory, speech (hypophonia) and mobility (rigidity and joint stiffness); he uses large keypads and voice recognition.
- Nikolaos Souflakos (had severe car accident): expressive aphasia, blurred vision.
- Ellen Kell: blind and partially deaf since the age of 12.
- Peter Brown: Asperger syndrome.
- Charles Lewis: chronic motor and vocal tics, Tourette syndrome.
Personas for AAL:
Personas for inclusive design:
- Inclusive design toolkit (created by the i~design 2 project): Example set of personas: these personas represent a family of four generations (no persons with disabilities).
Other personas:
- Harold from Anne Gibson's article "Reframing Accessibility for the Web", A List Apart, 3 February 2015.
- colord (color daemon): Typical user profiles (color daemon is a Linux toolkit for colour management).
See also:
- Designing With People | Putting people at the heart of the design process by the the i-design project.
- Kevin Rydberg: "Putting a Face on Accessibility", April 29, 2013. (Describes a blind persona named Keith.)
- Designing With People | Putting people at the heart of the design process: web-based resource created by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and the Royal College of Art to share ways to design with people.
- Sarah Horton: "The Value of Involving People with Disabilities in User Research", UserTesting.com, 4 March 2014.
- Shawn Henry: Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design (and print version of the book).