Persona

Create profiles of the people that will be using or buying your solution.

Personas help your team answer two questions: who are the users and what do they need to do? Personas represent anyone whose life your solution will affect. A solution can serve multiple personas; you may have primary and secondary target audiences. Understanding the needs and expectations of these people are key to developing a successful solution. A user can be multiple personas; their needs and expectations can change across different use cases and contexts.

Use personas to guide decision making whether it is validating ideas, inspiring new ideas, or prioritizing features. It can be used to quickly identify and communicate their needs. It helps tell a story of who you are solving for and who will be impacted by your solution.

Personas can be created for users or buyers. Users are the people using your solutions and buyers are the people purchasing your solution. For example, a user for a new car can be a university student and the buyer for a new car can be the parent of that university student.

A persona is not a real person, but should represent real feedback and beliefs. In the case that you don’t have enough time or budget to create a full research study, create a provisional persona. Gather information from the team’s current assumptions of who the target audience is, and validate these with research.

2-4 people

90 minutes

What you’ll need

Pens or markers
Sticky notes
Insights from research

Prerequisite Activities

None

Downloadable Materials

Instructions

step 1

Identify the persona types

Reference the research data gathered about real people. The type of research may be a mix of qualitative or quantitative information.

Make a list of the different types of personas your solution will impact. You will have more than 1 persona. Start with the main or most common users. Include secondary users and extreme users.

For each persona, write a goal. What are they trying to accomplish by engaging with your solution?

Then, revise the title of each persona, making sure it reflects each type.

Tip

Persona types are differentiated by their behaviors, motivations, and expectations.

step 2

Define the focus

Create a Persona canvas for each persona type. Add your persona’s title and goal from step 1. Give this persona a name and draw an image of it. Giving your persona a name will make the persona feel more real.

The persona’s goal is the job they are trying to accomplish. They will interact, purchase, or choose your solution to help them achieve this goal.

Tip

If you have multiple personas, consider breaking into groups to complete them.

step 3

Add demographic details

Provide information about the persona’s age, gender, location, education occupation, and marital status.

step 4

Add their values

What are the top 3 values that guide the persona’s decision making?

step 5

Tell their story

Write a short story from the persona’s perspective to summarize what matters to them in relation to accomplishing this goal. Provide information about the context, environment, and people around the persona when they are trying to accomplish this goal.

step 6

Describe their motivations

What is motivating your persona to accomplish this goal and why? What does your persona gain from achieving this goal?

step 7

Describe their functional expectations

How does the persona expect the potential solution to perform? This is the functional success criteria. These functional requirements must be fulfilled for the persona to perceive your solution is successful.

step 8

Describe their emotional expectations

How does the persona expect to feel when incorporating the potential solution? This is the emotional success criteria. These emotional requirements must be fulfilled for the persona to perceive your solution to be a good experience.

Emotional success has two parts: personal and social. How does the persona wants to personally feel with the potential solution? How does the persona believe they are perceived by others while using the potential solution?

step 9

Consider related goals

What does the persona want to accomplish in addition to the main goal either before, during, or after accomplishing the main goal? The related goals are things your persona is trying to get done when using your potential solution.

Tip

You can explore related goals to think about growth in other markets and opportunities to deliver more value.

step 10

Create a quote

Write a statement that summarizes and reflects what matters to the persona.

step 11

Reflect on your persona

Take a step back and look at your persona. You should now have a better understanding of who your users are and what they need to do.

step 12

Continue with the next persona

You can now move to the next canvas and add details to the other personas.

step 13

Using persona in your project over time

Use these personas to help your team to make decisions that focus on providing value to your users. When you reach a moment where you have to make a decision about your solution, trying asking: “how would this persona expect to interact with our solution?” or “what value does this part of the solution provide to the persona?”

The main goal that personas need to accomplish rarely change. The solution personas utilize to accomplish the goal will change. Revisit personas on a regular basis to refine the details based on new learnings.