Crafting Powerful Personas
Personas build empathy for the users but they are also flashlights: finding paths to increased engagement and user loyalty.
A good persona provides insights into distilled user needs, wants, and behaviors with qualitative and quantitative user research.
A fantastic persona is like a character from a favorite novel or movie: filled with ethos, pathos, intent, and failings. They have character arcs and story plots. Stakeholders should be cheering for a persona's success and reflective of their stumbles.
The last ingredient for powerful personas is the dedicated belief that these are real people and that they will change, grow, and regress.
Fantastic Personas & How to Create Them
Get Background
I start by learning everything I can about the product / business / brand. This is due diligence - I need to know everything the user might know and have practical experience with their interaction points.
Sample activities: Review owned content from all channels, product use, 3rd party assessments, customer service logs
I start by learning everything I can about the product / business / brand. This is due diligence - I need to know everything the user might know and have practical experience with their interaction points.
Sample activities: Review owned content from all channels, product use, 3rd party assessments, customer service logs
Interview the Stakeholders
Stakeholders provide the foundation for persona research. What are the business goals driving engagement and what are the anticipated user behaviors? These questions might not get the expected answers but the discussions can surface useful information and perspective.
Sample activities: workshops, individual conversations, feature / behavior prioritization card sorting
Stakeholders provide the foundation for persona research. What are the business goals driving engagement and what are the anticipated user behaviors? These questions might not get the expected answers but the discussions can surface useful information and perspective.
Sample activities: workshops, individual conversations, feature / behavior prioritization card sorting
Create Research Plan
A research plan provides a point of reference for what's known at the time, what insight is being sought, and the proposed methods of gaining that knowledge. The plan doesn't need to be formal but having one makes the user research phase accessible to stakeholders and prevents biased perspectives.
A research plan provides a point of reference for what's known at the time, what insight is being sought, and the proposed methods of gaining that knowledge. The plan doesn't need to be formal but having one makes the user research phase accessible to stakeholders and prevents biased perspectives.
When feasible I schedule user research activities from broad strokes to finest detail: surveys first, direct observations last.
Conduct User Research
Every user research method used should be selected and tailored for the product and goal.
Every user research method used should be selected and tailored for the product and goal.
These are common methods I employ:
+ Directed & Undirected Interviews
- In-person / Phone / Video / Screen Sharing
+ Surveys
- Web/app, email, print
+ Card Sorting
- In-person, hosted site
+ Direct Observation
- In-person, recorded testing
+ Indirect Observation
- Metrics, click analysis
- Statistics
- Social science research
How to Create a Persona's Backstory
(art+intuition+analysis)
+ Identify user challenges and connect them to business and engagement goals
+ Identify business challenges and connect them to users needs and wants
+ Select metaphors and interesting anecdotes from the qualitative research
+ Use demographic and metrics data as the persona building blocks
+ Use storytelling techniques to 'walk' each persona through the steps of accomplishing goals and interacting with the business
+ Create narrative hooks for each persona, for example use real world events related to the product or business
+ Ensure there are actionable steps for the business and the user to go along with each persona's narrative arc
+ Edit / Rewrite / Discuss / Edit / Rewrite
