User Personas

The User Personas is a tool designed to help you visualise and better understand your customer segment. It is the starting point of your problem exploration journey. The key to completing a User Persona is realising that it’s never finished. You will be continuously updating it as you gather more stories and insights from your interactions with real customers.

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Format TemplateTimeframe 1 hourGroup Size 1-10Facilitation Level MediumRequired Materials Persona templates, Pens, Post-its

Steps

  • Have a group discussion about what kind of persona(s) fall within your scope – 15 min.
  • Individually fill in a User Personas template, clearly indicate with a “?” the things you assume to be true, but are not sure about – 15 min.
  • Present your User Personas and decide on the persona you want to focus on as a starting point – 15 min.
  • Have a final discussion on what you don’t know and what you would like to find out about your persona. This will be important for your problem validation interviews – 15 min.

Benefits

  • User Personas can help you understand users’ motivations and needs and how these translate to the usability of your product or service.
  • They can help you understand negative issues such as perceived obstacles or problems in your product or service.
  • If you define and understand personas accurately it should give you a better handle on the sort of language, messages, imagery that your users will associate with and respond to and the sort of aspirations, hopes and needs they hold and attribute to artefacts and items they desire or own.

Tips

You can focus on multiple personas, but this means that you will have to complete all exercises for each persona. It’s often better to start with one, build and test a solution, and then start focusing on expanding your market.

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