The Youth Cafe will be having a persona creation event on Thursday 20th May 2021 at 2pm to 4pm EAT.
Objective: Persona events will kick off the human-centered design process where local partners and youth will engage in a participatory process to depict the priorities and attributes of our core audiences within the Kenya region.
This human-centered design activity will inform the design of the program at the very start by gathering input from key stakeholders about the need, motivations, challenges, and opportunities of your local community to ensure that the program is responsive to local needs and realities.
What are personas?
Personas are fictitious characters that are based on extensive research in order to sufficiently represent the different end users of a project/service. The personas do not describe real people but are composed based on real data collected from multiple individuals. In our case, we actively involved;
Youth stakeholders – youth who lead youth programming.
The staff of youth-serving organizations.
Decision-makers at private sector organizations. Stakeholders, participants in some activities, and targets of our research, data, and learning.
Decision-makers within local government. Stakeholders, participants in some activities, and targets of our research, data, and learning.
Research Institutions and Higher Education Intuitions (HEI). Stakeholders, participants in some activities, and targets of our research data and learning.
The aforementioned groups of people are the intended end-users and core audiences of our Digital and Media Literacy handbook we hope to develop.
Why do we create the personas?
We create personas to help in understanding the end-users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals.
They will help to recognize that different people have different needs and expectations.
Help us to identify with the end-user we are designing for thus being able to meet their real needs.
Provides a common understanding between us as the designers and the end-users.
Personas make the design task less complex, they guide the ideation processes, and they help to achieve the goal of creating a good user experience for the target user group.
Furthermore, personas provide meaningful archetypes that can be used to assess the design development against. Persona construction helps in asking the right questions and answering those questions in line with the users being designed for.
Characteristics of a persona
Fictional, Composite Profiles
Based on existing insights or new research
Express values, identifications, lifestyles
Help you develop empathy, focus on users, and make better decisions
Personas should be specific, credible, and based on reality
Include personal details, the broader context, and motivations, fears, and ambitions
As a key stakeholder in youth development, this will be a great opportunity for you to engage in the personal activity to help you also better understand different audiences engaged in digital spaces. We are happy to share with you the outputs of this design exercise which we hope will be useful for you in the work that you do. We intend to work with a diversified youth and stakeholders.
Kindly RSVP here before 19th May 2021 at midnight EAT.
If you have any questions, concerns, or need clarification, kindly email maureen.amuhinda@theyouthcafe.com.
Also for more information contact info@theyouthcafe.com