About the Assignment

Design personas are an excellent way to “flesh out your [web site] design’s personality” (Walter, p. 35) and provide you with a clear aesthetic guide for how you want to look and, importantly, feel to users.

Walter discusses the Design Persona process on pages 35 – 47. On pages 36 and 37 he lists the key sections of a Design Persona (which you can see on this Design Persona Template [.pdf]). Ours will look significantly different and have additional sections. Details and some examples appear below.

This assignment is informed by the following Course Objectives:

Objective 2: Effective Communication
Students will be able to identify and employ a range of effective communication strategies to navigate audience, purpose, and context.

Objective 3: Inclusive Design
Students will understand and apply inclusive design approaches to communicating through digital media.

Objective 4: Reflection
Students will develop their understanding of the important role of reflection during the investigation, design, and communication process.

Objective 5: Experimentation
Students will know what it feels like to step out of their comfort zones and take risks with their approaches to and understanding of web design.

Assignment Specifics

Our Design Personas will have the following sections (use the prompts in the Design Persona Template to guide your content for Walter’s sections and see sections we are adding to ours):

• Overview: This is where you should be writing about what personality you want your site to have. You can also think about a designer or celebrity whose aesthetic you’d like your site to represent.
• Why, How, and What statements: Include your why, how, and what statements from the homework as connected to your chosen professional field
• Field Diversity Statistics: Present the diversity statistics of your future field, based on the homework we completed.
• Job Selection Intentionality: Discuss the kind of business you hope to join and how that connects to your Why statements, and based on the homework on this we completed.
• Brand Traits: Complete as described in the template.
• Personality Map: Complete as pictured in the template.
• Voice: Complete as described in the template.
• Mood Board: Create a Mood Board based on a diverse collection of found or original images.
• Visual Lexicon: Use the three sections in the template
  • Typography
    • We will be using GoogleFonts, so please look for fonts there
    • Include 2 sets of header and content font combinations, including sample content
  • Color 
    • Don’t just list the colors or the font; include specific color swatches including the hex or RGB color codes.
    • Run your primary foreground and background colors through the WebAIM Contrast Checker. Take a screenshot of your colors and the results so we know they pass the test and include it in your Design Persona.
  • General Style Notes
• Engagement Methods: Complete as described in the template.

In the past, students have also included logos and other design features to enhance their personas. Look back to the work you completed in Digital Aesthetics or one of Dr. Sullivan’s or Dr. Knight’s design courses and see how you have presented design ideas. Make the document aesthetically pleasing, as well.

Exemplary Design Personas and Software

Here are several examples for what you could do with your design persona (all samples used with permission):

Sample Design Personas
These had the same requirements as we have this semester (except for the contrast checker, which is added this semester).

• Sample 1 (.pdf)
• Sample 2 (.pdf)
• Sample 3 (.pdf)
• Sample 4 (.pdf)
• Sample 5 (.pdf)

Applications to Create Your Design Persona
Students can use the application of their choice, but past students have had great success with Canva. They have also used Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop, but doing so is not required — and not recommended if you do not know that software very well.

Submission Info and Due Date

I will share with you a Google Folder called “Design Personas, Spring 2024.”

M 2/26: Please upload to that folder a PDF version of your design persona named “yourlastname-design-persona.pdf” by 11:00pm.