Getting started with creating personas — questions to ask
Firstly, what are personas?
User personas represent real, living people who will engage with your service or product — think of them as a composite sketch of your customer. By segmenting your target market into a few distinct personas, you can help us create content that will be most relevant and useful to them. Without personas, we’re assuming that we know what kind of content to deliver on the website, instead of creating information that our clients are actively looking for. While personas are hypothetical, the information you compile on them should be based on facts and hard data.
Get started with these questions…
1. Full name (or title)
Give this persona a name or title. If you choose to use a title, make sure it is specific. For example, “The aspiring entrepreneur” is too general. Is this a student or a deal-maker? An individual with a passion project? Before settling on a title, closely consider the message it sends audiences and the information it conveys.
2. Quotes
Capture the persona’s attitude towards your product or service. Why are they interested in what you’re offering? What type of solutions are they looking for? What matters most to them? This is usually a simple sentence that conveys the user’s voice. You can use real quotes or comments acquired from customer interviews, surveys or questionnaires.
3. Demographics
This section gives a quick insight into the persona’s background and lifestyle, if possible, collate this data by pulling information from your Google Analytics.
Look at things like:
• Age
• Gender
• Occupation
• Education
• Where do they live and work?
• Income
• How comfortable are they with using technology?
4. Personality
Understanding why users react the way they do to what is on screen is important in website design. So, we need to know: “Who is your user?”
The easiest way for us to construct personality types is through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/.
Use a scale of 1 to 10, when 1 is closest to the first option listed and 10 is closer to the second:
1. Favourite world:
Does this persona prefer to focus on the outer world (extraversion) or on their own inner world (introversion)?
Extraversion (1) or Introversion (10)
2. Information:
Does this persona prefer to focus on the basic information they take in (sensing) or do they prefer to interpret and add meaning (intuition)?
Sensing (1) or Intuition (10)
3. Decisions
When making decisions, does this persona prefer to first look at logic and consistency (thinking) or first look at the people and special circumstances (feeling)?
Thinking (1) or Feeling (10)
4. Structure
In dealing with the outside world, does this persona prefer to get things decided (judging) or do they prefer to stay open to new information and options (perceiving)?
Judging (1) or Perceiving (10)
If you’d like to add anything more about this persona’s key personality traits to help round out their overall personality, also list those.
5. Traits
Describe the persona’s work ethic, motivations and priorities. Are they an energetic, outgoing self-starter? Or a driven but disorganised introvert?
Choose adjectives that help define how this persona’s personality differs from other users or clients.
6. Goals
What information would your persona be looking for on the website? What would they need to solve a problem they’re having? Persona goals should be about what the persona gains from using your product or service — this could be tangible or intangible. Possibly elaborate on the tasks needed to achieve these goals.
7. Frustrations
What is preventing your persona from achieving their goals? What concerns do they have? What are their frustrations with current solutions already available? This section is key when it comes to honing the type of content that should appear on the website, app or product.
8. Biography
The bio should be a short paragraph to describe the user journey. It should include some of their history leading up to a current use case. It maybe be helpful to incorporate information listed across the template and add pertinent details that may have been left out. Highlight factors of the user’s personal and of professional life that make this user an ideal client of your product or service.
5. Compile your findings on a persona card
Represent your findings on persona cards for easy reference. There are a ton of resources and templates online.
Here are a few to get you started…
