I enjoy creating UX personas. It's one of my favorite parts of the website design process. Over the years I've shared back-of-the-napkin drawings with co-workers and have delivered client-ready, fully comped, color bios that deserved framing. But no matter the fidelity of the final output, there's always something about the simple thinking/sketching exercise that appeals to me.

I think I like it so much because it reminds me of what it was like when drawing was something I did for fun. An exploratory process eagerly dawned with the full understanding that there are no wrong answers, just a direct expression of thought on paper.

So recently, while my wife and I were helping our son fill out his college scholarship applications, I jumped at the opportunity to help him think through his answers and essays by crafting quick personas of his jurors. We whipped up three direct sketches representing the types of folks we imagined would be reviewing his work. It was amazing how quickly he was able to connect with the drawings and rework his language once we put names and rough characteristics to the individuals he was trying to persuade. It was a testament to just how intuitively the persona process is and how effective it can be. Plus, it was a lot of fun.

Did it payoff? We dunno yet. Ask us in a few months when all the applications have been reviewed and the monies have be divvied up.

If you've never created personas for your design projects you may want to give them a try. Here's a good primer on what they are and how to use them effectively. If you're an old pro with using personas but have never leveraged them in a non-conventional way, let me encourage you to mix things up and give it a try. What can it hurt? And you never know, there might just be a pot of gold on the other side.