Getting Personal: Creating Personas for Museum Visitors

Lightning Talk
Ahree Lee, Consultant, USA, Emily Lytle-Painter, Independent, USA

Utilizing techniques from user experience design, museums have begun to create personas to build experiences tailored to the needs of their various audiences. A persona is a composite profile of a person that’s based on real people who use your product or service, or visit your museum. They are not demographic profiles, but they’re based on behavior and attitudes – what people do, say, think, or feel – that can cross demographic boundaries. Designers refer to personas throughout the design process to make sure the product or service is built around the needs of the people who will be using it.

In 2014, the Getty Audience Experience team developed a set of personas to be used across the organization as common reference for web, interactive, and exhibition design projects. Using the framework of the visitor types from John Falk and strategies from Design Thinking, the team conducted interviews of Getty visitors and synthesized them into a group of personas unique to the Getty.

In this lightning talk, attendees will get a high-level introduction to the concept of personas and learn about the personas the Getty team developed.