personas - ChicoState/creditcardmatch GitHub Wiki

Personas

John

23 year old male in New York City

Analyst at Goldman Sachs B.A. in Mathematics

John works ~8 hours/day from Monday through Friday. He lives alone in a one bedroom apartment. On the weekends, he likes to take short trips to get away from the city. He has never had a credit card and wants to open his first one.

Goals:

  • Find cards that will give him the best travel rewards
  • Find cards that will give him the best cash back on his spending

Sarah

42 year old mother of 3 in Chicago, Illinois

Stay at home mom

Sarah spends a lot of her free time shopping for herself and her family and also going out for drinks with the other moms. She already has a couple credit cards, but is not sure if she is getting as many rewards as she could be getting.

Goals:

  • Find cards that are giving better rewards than her current ones
  • Find cards that give rewards for shopping, groceries, and restaurants

Alex

28 year old male in Tucson, Arizona

Construction worker; does yard work on the side

Alex lives with his wife and dog in an apartment complex. He enjoys the outdoors and being active, but hasn’t had a lot of experience with computers due to a distrust of government and large institutions. He grew up without a lot of money and he witnessed his parents constantly stressing over bank fees and high-interest traps, which has made him weary of banks and credit. He likes to keep to himself and believes you don’t really own anything unless you physically possess it.

Goals:

  • Either have assurance of a transparent company or get trustworthy user reviews on products before he engages with them.
  • Have a simple process to compare these cards and access all the information he needs in one place

Daniel

16 year old male in Washington state

High school student Just got his first job working at Chipotle

Loves to play football and wants to get his first credit card. He wants to buy the best sporting equipment he can get. He plans to go to college for football. He is the best at football in his entire high school, and is expected to have a very successful career in the NFL. To help in his athletic career, he has his own home gym and spends a lot on supplements and healthy food.

Goals:

  • Optimize his finances and to get the best deals on things he can.

Emily

60 year old woman in North Dakota.

Works as a manager at a jewelry store.

She has 2 cats and 2 dogs and has been married for 30 years. She spends a lot of time with her pets and going for walks rather than going out to commercial places. She likes to save as much money as she can and lives a fairly modest life. The only time she likes to spend money is on her trip to Europe that she takes every 2-3 years.

Goals:

  • Continue to save her money by being frugal
  • Get the best vacation deals possible.

Scenarios

John is going on a vacation:

  • It’s been a long week of work and John is going to take a weekend trip to Miami. Before he books the trip, he is wondering if he should open a new credit card to pay for the trip with. He is hoping there is some sort of sign up bonus out there that could end up getting him a discount on the flights or hotel for this trip or one of his next ones.

Sarah ponders her points:

  • At the end of the year, Sarah is doing her family’s taxes and going over their spending. She notices that they have spent a lot on groceries, restaurants, and clothes. She got points from her current credit cards from all of that spending, but is wondering if she could have gotten more.

Daniel wants an easy way to pay for things:

  • Daniel has been frustrated lately by paying for everything in cash. It’s tiring for him to count the individual coins he needs to pay for something. He hears that people can use cards to pay for things almost instantly. His problem is that he doesn’t know anything about how these cards work nor which of the many dozens of available cards he should get.

Alex is looking for a house:

  • Alex and his wife have been talking about buying a house, but his lack of a credit score has complicated things. He figures he has to compromise to some extent and finally apply for a credit card, but he is still skeptical of large companies and their interests. He looks for user ratings and reviews of various credit cards, but has trouble navigating through all the options. The existing skepticism surrounding credit cards and the lack of direction puts added stress on him at home and at work.

Emily wants travel rewards:

  • Emily has been planning her next trip to Italy for the past week. She wants to get every detail right. After selecting several points to visit, she needs to decide on which flights and hotels to stay at. She hears that some credit cards offer travel rewards and wants to take advantage of that. She wants to know which card to get to maximize her travel rewards for her trips to Europe and which airline companies those rewards will work with.