USING PERSONAS TO BUILD GREAT

PRODUCTS08 February 2017

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Introductions

§ Pedro Azevedo

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§ Mark Krishan Gray

Contents

§ What are personas?§ Different types of persona§ What we’ve learnt§ Common challenges of using personas§ How you can overcome some of these challenges§ Q&A (30 minutes)

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What are personas?

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§ A representation of a customer or user that can be used within an organization when the customer is not present

§ Their power lies in their ability to help you develop empathy for them, so you can build products and services that meet their needs and solve their problems

Different types of persona

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Marketing personas

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§ An overview of who your user is

§ Not focused on a specific problem

§ Aim to support marketing efforts

User/Design personas

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§ Focused on goals, pains and behaviors

§ Target a specific problem

§ Are the output of user research

Proto-personas

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§ The result of secondary research and educated guesses

§ Not validated with user data

§ Good starting point before doing further research

What we’ve learnt

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§ Teams typically use organization wide personas

§ Personas tend to be developed by a central function or an external party

§ Most personas take the shape of marketing personas

Common challenges of using personas

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1. Using the wrong type of persona

2. Personas not built around a specific problem

3. Personas built based on no data

4. Personas that never change

5. Outsourcing

6. Personas that are too similar

Using the wrong type of persona

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§ Anchoring decisions on data that is not relevant

§ Creates confusion within teams and stakeholders, impacting communication and decision-making

Personas not built around a specific problem

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§ Having a scope that’s too wide tends to generate unfocused solutions

§ You should understand the context, and then narrow the scope

Personas based on no data

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§ If there’s no proof, then it’s an assumption

§ Different people with different opinions and with no supporting data… how do you make decisions?

Personas that never change

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§ Changes in context impact users

§ Static personas are a sign of unresponsiveness

Outsourcing

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§ To build products that users love, empathy is key

§ If it’s your user, or your customer, then you need to own it!

Personas that are too similar

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§ People use products and services in different ways and have different problems to solve

§ If personas are too similar, are you addressing a single need? Or are you ignoring part of your market?

Overcoming some of these challenges

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§ Tips- Identify the problem that needs to be solved- Observe and interview customers/users to get a better

understanding of the problem- Develop personas that accurately represent your

customers/users- Refine the personas with your team, based on the insights from

your research- Ensure your personas are dynamic and change if you collect

new insights

Identify the problem

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§ The identified problem is generally based on limited data and assumptions

§ The first step is to collect the information that you already have, as a starting point.

§ What is the problem, or the manifestation of the problem, and who can you talk to if you need to learn more?

Observe & Interview

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§ Learn from behaviors and attitudes of your users

§ Take the time to observe your users

§ Interview your users to generate more insights

Develop personas

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§ Condense your insights

§ ~8-10 people presenting similar behaviors and attitudes could represent a persona

§ Focus your personas on a specific problem

Refine personas

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§ As you develop and test your solutions, you will keep generating more insights

§ Those insights should serve as fodder to update your personas

Make them dynamic

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§ Be aware of context

§ Question how changes may impact your users

§ Update your personas to reflect this

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