UX Playground
Recently I attended a meet up held by UX playgrounds organiser Chakib Labidi. It was all about the purpose and limitations of personas. There were a range of attendees from those who are familiar with personas and those who are not. I found the group on Meetup.com. If you are interested in UX, check it out here: UX Playground
Customer Centric Culture
I’ve had make some strategy decisions with Flypay. Did I always get to work on both the business and the user needs? I’d be lying if I said this was always the case but it was something I was striving towards. When I joined the team at Flypay, I noticed that there was the appreciation for users. But when I asked around, everyone was working to their individual bias and intuition of who our customers were. At the time decisions were being only from the business goals and needs. It was only a start but personas as a tool started to give us some focus, a little zen and helped us make decisions together. You know the saying:
‘One for all and all for one’ — Alexandre Dumas père published in the novel The Three musketeers.
You may have heard of personas and you have your interpretation of what they are. You can quickly learn that everyone has their bias of who your customers are. Ask your colleagues the same question, most probably the answers will vary significantly. Think about it for a second, how can decisions be made if everyone is on a different page? in who’s interest is the decision made? and what impact could this have, both business and customers?
What Personas Look Like
Personas vary in size and shape. But the fundamentals are usually the same with the:
- name
- demographics (age range, occupation, location, education, and some other basics)
- behaviours
- motivations
- needs & goals
- pain points
- a quote
- brief story/bio
- image to bring it to life
If anything, just remember personas contain relevant information that can effectively and readily be available to you when decisions need to be made that could effect the customers and the business.
What Type Of Personas Are There?
We were shown three types of personas. Let me take you through each of them.
1. Provisional Personas
Provisional personas are assumptions based. Assumptions! What use is that? when its not factual why bother? This is something I’ve come across during my experience. But I think Jeff Gothelf explains this well…
‘The initial value in producing proto-personas derives from the exercise of producing them, which restores the focus of an organisation back onto the customer.’ — Jeff Gothelf
Running this exercise with the decisions makers of discovery and the thought process, the outcome is a product of their own efforts and therefore they are more likely to value this in any future decision making.
Remember, don’t fear assumptions, be aware of them.
2. Design Personas
Now it’s time to put on that research cape and go prove or disprove these assumptions you collected. Design personas are used throughout your design process to make informed decisions keeping a focus on your customers. These personas should represent information that would help you understand your users behaviours, motivations, needs and pain points.
‘Personas are representations of a cluster of users with similar behaviours, goals, and motivations.’ — Kim Flaherty
3. Marketing/Buyer Personas
Marketing personas capture snapshots of your audiences your product appeals. I think Ardath Albee explains this well.
‘a persona is really focused on the roles and responsibilities of particular people that you are going to try to establish dialogue and conversation with, that are going to be part of that purchasing process.’ — Ardath Albee
The purpose should always be to understand your customers better you could help your company to communicate more effectively, as well as to be able to target ads and campaigns more precisely.
What Impact Personas Have
When it’s done badly
An attendee at this event mentioned they had both design and marketing personas in her company. However, there were problems in that the marketing team and product team were not on the same page on who the customers were.
We learned that the persona’s had different audiences with different behaviours, demographics and goals. It showed how easy it was to go and build personas on bias. Chakib mentioned that the personas should really be the same audience with the relevant information for both the design and marketing team.
A product that does not fulfil a real user need, can it be sold? yes! there are super sales people out there that can! good on them!
However, if the product does not fulfil a user need, how likely are the users to use it? chances are they won’t.
When it’s done correctly
Keeping in touch with your customers needs and behaviours through research can help your company focus its strategy. It’s important to have between 3–5 personas otherwise the focus of the team could drift. As a group it will be easier to make design decisions based on your customers needs. You will no longer need to debate on your bias of what customer needs and wants. You will all be in it together, meaning your workflow will be more effective and generally more a positive environment. At the end of the day, the tool is used to help communicate the key learning about the customers to make a product that will be useful, usable and delightful.
Summary
Personas can be a powerful tool when used correctly. They bring focus and help make effective and impactful decisions. Personas do have limitations and its important to realise changes are inevitable. Yes, what once were the needs and motivations of your users yesterday, they can change tomorrow. Thus, personas are never complete, but always responding to change. You can always get started today with collecting data about your customers. This quote by Seth helps me communicate to others how relevant it is to understand our customers.
‘Treat different people differently. Anything else is a compromise.’ — Seth Godin
I’d love to hear about your personal experiences and your advice with using and creating personas.
Thanks for reading!
