Personas alone can detail the characteristics of a person, whether positive or negative. What goes into the persona depends on the project, but it overall decides why the user needs or wants the product. 

The Persona Spectrum

When interacting with design, everyone experiences exclusion in some way. Therefore, designers purposely create with constraints in mind to limit this and open the possibility to benefit more users. 

The spectrum helps teams to understand related mismatches and motivations across a spectrum. From permanent or situation scenarios, the tool makes it easier to empathize with the user and why they made a certain decision. 

Instead of just utilizing demographic information (age, location, occupation), the spectrum describes, as mentioned, permanent or situational factors to understand how a constraint may affect a purchasing decision. 

https://uxcellence.com/2018/accessible-design-intro

Constraints

The following are restraint situations that can affect user behavior and purchasing decisions. 

Permanent

Permanent restraints are ones that the user cannot typically change. These factors include blindness, physical impairment, day-to-day chronic stress, or even lack of social awareness.

These factors are ones that the user deals with and are relative to them, causing a gap in communication if not noticed. 

Temporary

Temporary restraints are restraints that can be similar to those of permanent nature but may only last a shorter period of time. 

We can refer to medical conditions that temporarily impair users to read or even view screens. We can also acknowledge people who are in the process of learning, which can be anything from reading to coding skills.  

Many of us can resonate with temporary restraints regarding languages. A lot of businesses send their employees abroad who aren’t native speakers, causing them to be unaware of signage and visual cues with words. 

Situational

These restraints refer to the user’s surroundings when interacting with a site or product. 

Think of loud environments or even social distractions. These factors can limit our attention to detail or thought process when making an important decision. 

Avoiding Constraints

Expand your functionality

Instead of using personas at the beginning of the project, integrate them throughout your campaign. If something changes within your project, then most likely your personas have changed as well or something needs to be fixed. Research is essential during this step. 

Merge spectrums

This is the biggest tip!

Merging spectrums can increase design processes success. It’s easier than you think! When developing one persona think of another complimentary persona, such as language barriers, to incorporate to diversify your design. 

If your site needs a redesign, contact Blue Archer.