Personas are fictional characters, which are used very commonly in order to represent and understand customer needs, behaviors and goals. Those fictive cl..haracters help to guide the ideation process and create or improve the customer experience.
Personas are no real people but are created based on real data collected from multiple individuals. They should help to describe the customers / types of customers in order to help companies to ask the right questions and develop their products and service in the right direction.
How to create personas?
The first step is to plan the project and set goals. A concrete goal helps to research and collect data for the creation of personas. Personas usually are based on real data, in order to be as close as the customers as possible.
Afterwards, data for the personas are collected. Those data can be accessed internally or externally. Internal data would be business plans, training material, CRM data, information from usability tests, or conducted survey. External data are market data from official statistics companies or target group analysis, to name just a few. To be as concrete as possible, it is very helpful to use and combine data from different sources.
As a next step, the collected data needs to be analyzed and organized. Organization of the data means that they are clustered within specific topics, such as characteristics, goals, motivation, etc. For each persona, data of the named categories are collected.
The collection and clustering of the data allows the company to define the personas.
Personas come alive by getting specific attributes, either as a short text or as just with bullet points. The persona gets a name, age group, gender, family status, income, and many more.
The defined personas can then be used to develop or improve products and services. As already described at the beginning, the personas sort of represent the voice of the customers / target group and help to meet their needs.
4 different perspectives on personas
In order to add most value, personas can take four perspectives. Those perspectives are described below.
1. Goal-directed personas
It focuses on what the user wants to do with the product / service. The goal is to establish processes and workflows, which suit the needs of the persona. That type of personas are based on the perspectives of Alan Cooper, an American software designer and programmer, who is also called “Father of visual basic”.
2. Role-based personas
This persona is also goal based and the behavior is important, but it focusses on the role of the user in the organization. Typical questions for this persona are: What’s the purpose of this role? What business objectives are required? Who else is impacted by the duties of the role?
3. Engaging personas
Engaging personas can be seen as both goal and role-oriented but are a more traditional type of persona. The goal is, that the designer can engage with the personas. Therefore, 3D renderings, as an example, are created and emotions are added.
4. Fictional personas
The fictional personas are not based on research and data collection but are established based on the experiences of the UX design team. The team makes assumptions based on interactions and their experience with the user group.
Sources:
https://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/persona-personas-entwickeln https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them
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