As technology evolves, so do the people who interact with it. Understanding your users is a core part of enhancing their experience when using your product. The Generational Theory has been a good way to group an era of users who may have shared similar life experiences. In turn this creates a holistic understanding for the different user groups.
There have been many generational groups but these are the current relevant ones:
Personas
There are many techniques but one of the more popular ones are personas. Personas can help put a face to your users and can give you a more realistic and empathetic connection. It can also give you a deep insight into people who use your product. Importantly they create archetypal descriptions of user behavior.
Personas can be used as a great comparison tool to see if business and users goals are aligned. It allows UX Designers to have a clearer and better understanding when providing solutions to business. This will help you keep your product focused on delivering a pleasurable experience.
The below persona examples can be used for a travel specific product:
Why use them?
Personas can be used as a great comparison tool to see if business and users goals are aligned. It allows UX Designers to have a clearer and better understanding when providing solutions to business. This will help you keep your product focused on delivering a pleasurable experience.
Conclusion.
While the generational theory cannot totally define every single user. It is a good way to quickly group together a understanding of hypothesized user behaviour.
Users will always be multi-dimensional and that is why personas can contribute greatly to a product’s development. When you know the real-life people behind your product it creates an empathetic connection to your users.
Sometimes business see personas as a “nice to have” and this is often an oversight. However as UX professionals, it is imperative that we drive this process upfront as it can provide critical feedback to everyone in the product development cycle/team. Personas that are constructed well can be re-used for longer periods of time and therefore they don’t have to be constantly updated.
