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Home » Methods » Persona

Persona

Lack of needs orientation
2-3 project managers
medium
Min. 4 hours
  • Digital whiteboard: Miro or Mural
  • Video conferencing: Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc.
Best Practices

Explanation of the method

  1. At the beginning, think about who the target group(s) of your project is/are. For each of your target groups, create a fictitious user type (=persona) that represents your specific target group. Depending on the number of target groups, this can be one or more personas. You should create a corresponding number of templates in which the most important characteristics of your persona are recorded.
  2. Give your persona a fictitious name and represent it with a photo. Collect qualitative and/or quantitative data from your specific target audience. Depending on the complexity of the data collection, the time required for the method varies considerably. You should use both primary and secondary data.
  3. Describe your persona together as a team. Start with demographic facts, such as age, occupation, marital status, and place of residence.
  4. Gather more information about your persona. What is their environment like? Where does your persona spend a lot of time? What influences them? What media does your persona use? What wishes and fears does she or he have? Depending on the relevance for your project, you can add further attributes.
  5. Finally, define what you do not yet know about your persona and distribute these research tasks among your project participants.
  6. Always refer to your persona when making decisions in the project. Is your project aligned with your persona and are their needs being met? Continually update your persona in the project as you gather new information.

Advantages

  • Personas are described in a simple and understandable way for all project participants. They create a better understanding of the target group and help to put yourself in the user's shoes.
  • Personas are helpful to develop empathy, so that you have concrete people in mind during the development of your product/service without using real people.
  • Personas are an essential step in the user-centered development process. They are based on facts, not assumptions, and support informed project decisions because they are based on user needs and goals.

Disadvantages

  • Personas can never provide an accurate prediction of how users will behave in reality.
  • Often the team quickly focuses on a stereotype, this should be avoided.
  • The collection and gathering of necessary data takes some time.

Advice from practice

  • Don't create too many personas to avoid losing the overview. Focus on 3-5 clear, differentiated personas. If necessary, add an anti-persona, i.e., a person who does not belong to the target group.
  • A template that can be filled out digitally is useful and makes it easier for you to add or change information.
  • The persona should not be created by a single person. It makes sense to involve different people in your project.
  • If, for example, you gather new information through a contact with your target group, you should adapt the persona accordingly
Please note that the tools and methods were created as of August 2024 and all Miro Boards are editable.
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