User personas: what they are, how to make them, and how to use them
Regardless of your industry, there’s a good chance you’ll come across a user persona or two in your life (and if not, you should seek them out for yourself!). In this blog post, we’ll break down what a user persona is and, more importantly, how to use them. With that said, there’s one overarching point about user personas that you should keep in mind before you embark on creating your own: user personas are living documents. That means that your user personas can continue to evolve alongside your company, drastic industry changes, and even large-scale societal changes. Just like real people, user personas can (and should) adapt and grow.
What is a user persona?
User personas are widely-used across disciplines to illustrate a possible representation of a specific target audience or group. They serve as a reminder to all team members, about the real world audiences they are targeting to use their products/solutions/services and the motivations those audiences most likely have. Although they’re most commonly used in UX design and marketing, they’re beneficial to most team members as they remind organizations who they serve. More explicitly, user personas are a documentation of a possible “person” who belongs to a company’s target audience or user group. So, for a health system, a user persona could have a number of roles including patient, doctor, nurse, executive, etc. These roles can be as specific or as broad as needed for the company’s needs, but they should be well-researched and realistic representations of an individual.
Generally, user personas include the following:
Demographics
This can include gender, race, ethnicity, age, location, marital status, education level, etc.
Bio
This section tells the story of the individual and is more of a narrative than a list of facts unlike the other sections on the user persona.
Occupation
This can include title, company, number of years with the company, skillset, etc.
Motivations & Frustrations
This can include personal and/or professional motivations and frustrations. You’ll generally see some variation of this section included on most user personas, but occasionally with different names such as “pain points” instead of frustrations.
Personality Markers
This section is flexible and can include a variety of personality traits or metrics. For example, this could include mentioning whether this person tends to be outgoing or introverted, cautious or risky, and so forth.
Photo
Including a photo on your persona is a great way to humanize the document and allow team members to empathize with the persona. The photo should reflect the demographics listed earlier.
Quote
Some personas also include a quote that this person would likely say. Quotes can be a good idea to further humanize the persona, but make sure the quote is as realistic and natural as possible otherwise you could contradict or distract from the rest of the material on the page.
How do I make a user persona?
Research and more research. Typically, the largest factor that determines the process for creating user personas is budget. With that said, there are a lot of ways to do low budget (or no budget) research that still results in helpful personas.
Secondary research
Depending on the industry you’re working with, there may already be a number of external resources that document personas others have created. The healthcare space is a great example of this, and there are a number of articles online that have documented the primary goals and barriers for various healthcare stakeholders. Other good strong resources for gathering information for user personas include job descriptions, social media posts (LinkedIn, etc.), Facebook groups, hobby boards, or even “day in the life” videos on YouTube.
Primary research
Primary research is an ideal way to get information for a user persona. This could entail interviews with target users or a survey to better inform the content on your user personas. Depending on the budget and timeline of the project, interviews and surveys could mean anything from speaking with friends and connections to launching a full scale research endeavor.
What can I do with a user persona? Why do they matter?
Design
Fundamentally, user personas inform design decisions and assist in keeping with user-centered design principles. They ensure that designers do not insert their own values or company values into designs, but keep the users at the forefront of the process.
Content
When creating content (messages toward a value proposition), user personas help inform content decisions and applications. This includes what media to use as well as what copy will best address specific users.
Empathy
Personas remind team members what difficulties and frustrations the target audience is experiencing which means that marketers, salespeople, etc. can be more effective when they address each individual.
Consistency
Personas allow team members to be on the same page about whom they are trying to serve, and how to best serve them.
Innovation & Industry Thought Leadership
Demonstrating an understanding of your key audience members means that potential investors (or even new team members) can see key opportunities for innovation and immediately understand the real world application of your product or service. It also allows companies to demonstrate a practical understanding of their user base which can lead to stronger industry thought leadership, more targeted marketing, and even more sales leads.
That’s great and all, but how do I actually use them to do those things?
Let’s look at an example of how to use user personas. Let’s say you work for a company that specializes in student healthcare solutions and you’re interested in redesigning your website. To do this, you’ve updated the layout of the site as well as the copy. While you’re updating the site, you refer to the user personas your team created to make sure that the content and design stay aligned with the motivations of your target audiences, while minimizing their frustrations.
Let’s pretend Ellen, Director of Health Services, is one of these personas.
Thinking about your design choices from Ellen’s perspective, you may realize that she will approach your site with a selective eye which means that your elaborate designs may mean that she doesn’t reach the bottom line fast enough. Moreover, you realize that she’s looking for a simple solution that can appease many stakeholders with distinct interests. With that in mind, you change your introductory line from “the one-stop-shop for student health on campus” to “a healthy solution for students and campus care teams alike.”
While this example may seem straightforward, you would be surprised by how often analysis like this is overlooked. Team members have an understandable tendency to rely on their knowledge of the product and their own life experiences to inform design and business decisions. Moreover, team members with a strong proximity to the product may have a clouded perspective when it comes to understanding the needs of their users. By incorporating user personas, team members can step away from their own biases and worldview to better imagine their product/solution from the perspective of their user. This technique works for content across mediums, including product design, pitches, slide decks, social media posts, websites, flyers, etc.
Recommended next steps:
User personas are amazing tools but we also want to highlight a few other useful practices for better understanding your audiences and keeping them at the forefront of decision-making processes.
Profiles
Attempting to deeply understand real individuals whom you would like to meet, or are planning to meet at a conference/event or over the phone, is a great way to gain better insight into your users and/or potential clients. Using resources like LinkedIn, you can usually get enough of a sense about someone’s interests to prompt better insight into their motivations and even frustrations. While these don’t replace the need for user personas, they do give an extra edge to business development and marketing endeavors.
User Research
Although we mentioned it briefly above, user research is a great way to get real quantitative and qualitative data on your specific user base. (Psst...keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming blog post on the ins and outs of user research!).
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