PERSONA PROFILE

(tool)

Brief description

Fictional characterizations (drawn from real research and discovery data) that represent a significant number of users that reflects similar patterns and synthesis of characteristics; it is an informed summary of their mindset, needs, and goals. When you put a face to your findings, you make your data meaningful and make them visible and memorable; you can bring your users to life, not as a demographic description of people to be sold but as a flesh-and-blood people with names, challenges, hopes and dreams.

Step

Define

Input

Findings & information gather in discovery activities

Output

Understanding of users

Time

30 min to 1 hr.

Difficulty

5/5

People

3-5 (participants)

Quick Guide

Select several dimensions (usually psychographic, as habits, hobbies, spending habits and values, rather than demographic) that you feel are revealing.
Identify group of users with a set of similar patterns and dimensions, which shares some common needs and characteristics.
Create a descriptive text that make each representation unique: demographics (age, gender, occupation, salary, nationality), psychographics, challenges, goals, needs, and experiences.
Create a name for your persona profile.
Include an image that represents each persona.

Benefits

Helps the team remember and discuss the people for whom you are designing for.
Focuses on people above other factors.
Helps understand the needs of your users in greater detail.
Make talking about customers and their characteristics more tangible and concrete and make it easier to refer back to a pattern of characteristics.

Helpful Tips

Can be used as a reference for generating ideas, prioritizing features, or discussing trade-offs decisions.
You may want to combine your results with the journey map. Map the journey of each persona, each should reveal its own set of “pain points”
Often you will have more than one persona for each product, choose only one as your primary focus.