One of the main tasks while working on my third project work was to define personas of my client’s target audience. I started to solve this task by reading related literature and very quickly realized that we can come across different types of personas and that there are different layers of defining each type of persona. So, let’s explain what I’ve learned.  

A persona is a fictional user archetype—a composite model you create from the data you’ve gathered by talking to real people—that represents a group of needs and behaviors. Erika Hall

Personas embody the behavior patterns and priorities of real people and act as a reference point for decision-making. A persona is a tool for maintaining an empathetic mindset rather than defining something a certain way just because someone on the team likes it.

When personas evolve from authentic stories related to actual users or buyers, in the form of one-on-one interviews, the methodology and presentation allow us to capture their expectations and the factors that influence them. Only that context can allow us to truly stand in our user or buyer’s shoes and consider their decision from their point of view. 

Personas can be useful tools for different fields of practice from design to business strategy, marketing, or engineering. Each of these professions can benefit in their own way from a single set of personas.

When designing personas, it is important to understand that design targets are not marketing targets. Buyers have different needs, expectations, and goals than users. According to A. Ravella, we can separate customers into two categories: those “before purchase” - buyer personas and those “after purchase” - user personas. The primary goal for both types of personas is identical which is to discover the customer insights that will help teams make good decisions. But it immediately becomes clear that development teams will need very different insights than marketing teams.

When defining a new product, we should address a user persona. In the process of creating a useful user persona, it is also important to pay attention that the user type with the highest value to our business may not be the one with the most value to the design process. For instance, the target audience of contemporary visual artists is of the highest value for my client – the Association for Contemporary Art Rotor. Its expertise is based on presenting the works of contemporary artists to a wider audience. But in the process of designing a new product, in Rotor’s case a new website, I realized I should concentrate on users with less expertise and in that way meet the needs of those with more. The focus should be on the general audience, interested community, and visitors - stakeholders to whom Rotor provides the service, and presents contemporary art.

A persona profile creates a sense of the human connection with people whom we have never met face-to-face. For the same reason, for instance, we find it much easier to communicate via social media when we have a photograph of a person we have never met in person.

Persona profiles are an attractive way to display demographic or psychographic data. Data such as person’s age, income, marital status, education, or such as personality, values, lifestyles, and opinions.

Regarding personas defined only on demographics and/or psychographics, Adele Ravella argues that such distinctions (information) can be irrelevant, if not misleading when applied in many instances of product design or persuasive marketing. Her conclusion is that building buyer personas only on that kind of data is not the best way to build a buyer persona. In both cases, it is obvious that we still have to guess about what triggers our customer interest to evaluate the solution, the barriers that prevent him from finalizing the purchase, and which of our advantages will impress him. Besides defining a buyer persona on persona profile, considering only demographics and psychographics, A. Ravella suggests considering other relevant insights which are in the case of buyer persona buying insights.

According to Erika Hall, a persona profile can help us in the product design phase. It can help us focus on who our user is through demographic data assigned to a fictional name and portrait. A persona profile should have just enough detail to capture those aspects of a target user that are most useful and inspiring for the designers to keep in mind.

Elements that we should consider are:

• Photo – those of real, relatable people.
• Name – chosen to fit the demographics information.
• Demographics – data such as gender, age, education, profession, marital status, and location.
• Role – selected to closely match those of target user types.
• Quote – to embody a core belief or attitude that is essential to keep in mind to meet our users’ needs.
• Goals – few key goals that the final product should serve or relate to.
• Behaviors & Habits – patterns that define each target user type. 
• Skills – the identified level of technical expertise and experience of target users.
• Scenario - if personas are our characters, scenarios are our plots. Running a persona through a scenario helps us think through the design from the user’s point of view. 

For my third project work, I created a persona profile for my client target audience. The goal was to capture the most useful and inspiring aspects of target users important for designers of Rotor's new website to keep in mind. 

Adele Ravella argues that marketers could have benefited from building Buyer Personas that included two parts, a Buyer Profile and Buying Insights, describing the when, how, and why aspects of a customer's decision to purchase. According to her, when we combine the Buyer Profile with other Insights (Buyer Insights), we can have clear guidance for the decisions we need to make to win our business.

In my opinion, these insights could not only be marketing-oriented but also relate to product or service design. So, it might be possible to use the same principles for building the user persona for the design target. The outcomes would certainly vary, but the principle used would be the same.

With these 5 insights, we can get to know what happens and who is involved as our buyer/user navigates from the status quo to purchase or use a solution like ours.

• Insight 1—Priority Initiative 

The Priority Initiative insight explains the most compelling reason that buyers decide to invest in a solution similar to the one we offer or why users consider a solution we are designing. 

• Insight 2—Success Factors

The Success Factors insight describes the operational or personal results that our buyer persona expects from purchasing a solution like ours or results that the user expects from using a solution we are developing. 

• Insight 3—Perceived Barriers

Insights that tell us what prevents buyers or users from considering our solution—as well as why some believe that our competitors have a better approach. 

• Insight 4—Buyer’s or User’s Journey

This insight reveals the behind-the-scenes story about the work our buyers or users do to evaluate options, eliminate contenders, and settle on their final choice. 

• Insight 5—Decision Criteria

Insights that can lead us to learn about the specific attributes of our product, service, or solution that buyers or users evaluate as they compare alternative approaches. 

For my master thesis, I will consider extending Rotor's persona profiles by elaborating on the other insights mentioned in this article.

Sources:

Revella, A. (2015). Buyer personas: How to gain insight into your customer’s expectations, align your marketing strategies, and win more business. John Wiley & Sons.

Hall, E. (2013). Just Enough Research. A Book Apart, New York