Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Power of The Persona
The Power of The Persona
The Power of The Persona
By Bonnie Rind
Troubling results
DataMine 1.0 had been sent to market
with little functionality and an obviously
awkward interface. The previous
release of DeskTop had been of
mediocre quality and was now
suffering poor adoption and slow
sales as existing users chose to
stick with the previous version,
and corporations demurred from
standardizing on an unstable
product. Unfortunately, since
DataMine required the newest
version of DeskTop in order to
function, the overall corporate
strategy of selling to enterprise
accounts suffered.
Overall, this wonderful company
with an established, successful
product and another early-stage
product (based on a solid concept)
was suffering from issues of:
• Conflicted vision
• Roadmap uncertainty
• Poor prior product releases While I didn’t expect personas
to be a cure-all for this list, I was
• Frequent changes to release expectations,
confident personas would help
plans and schedules
Development and Product Management
• Developer-chosen features and interfaces find more common ground and improve
overall development execution.
• Dissimilar product-related output from
different departments
What is a persona? Getting to know your persona The power of the persona
In theatre, a persona, meaning “mask” While a persona isn’t a real person, Once the company internalizes
in Latin, refers to a role played by an he must feel like a real person to the personas and how they relate
actor. Colloquially, the term is used to everyone in your company. Therefore, to the product, these personas guide
describe the social representation we in addition to facts related to his use Marketing and Product Management
all put on display in daily life. In of the product, we must have basic in simplifying and clarifying product
product management and development, knowledge about our persona documentation such as the product
a persona is a detailed representation including his: roadmap, requirements documents
of an example user. and marketing material.
• Name, age, and education
For our purposes, we create By looking at the product and product
personas, or example users, as tools • Socioeconomic class and plan from the personas point of view,
to represent the needs, desires, skills socioeconomic desires communications become more
and environment of one or more • Life or career goals, fears, hopes, straightforward because:
classes of real users. The terminology and attitudes
we use is as follows: • Superfluous information and over-
• Reasons for using the product specifications can be eliminated
• The primary persona is the
primary user of the particular • Needs and expectations of the • Features are prioritized according
interface or entire product. product to the persona’s values
• The secondary persona is another • Intellectual and physical skills that • Product messaging can focus on the
user of the primary interface, one for can be applied to the product product’s value to the buyer persona
whom we will make accommodations Personas are especially powerful for
so long as the primary persona’s • Personal biases about the product
or product space development teams. Once developers
experience is not compromised. get to know these carefully chosen
• The negative persona is the user The key to making a useful, valid example users, they gain an ability to
for whom we explicitly will not add persona is: put themselves in the persona’s shoes.
product features or capabilities This new empathy empowers them to:
• She must be carefully created during
because to do so will pull our a discovery process that includes • Understand requirements with less
product in a direction we do interviewing actual users and detail and specification
not want to go. company employees exposed to the
actual users. • Make good, reasonable
• The buyer persona is the buyer implementation decisions
(either an extension of an existing • She must be consistent and lifelike. independently
persona or a non-user) whose biases
and needs must be addressed in the • She must represent the most useful • Raise valid concerns and
product and/or the marketing class of product users. opportunities
material.
In other words, the persona must be a • Stay focused on the real
These personas enable us to make well-described, archetype of a user requirements and avoid being
appropriate decisions when building group. You know you have a valid sidetracked by edge cases
and marketing our products. persona identified when you can
imagine working alongside him, • Feel satisfied they contribute
spending time with her, or encountering creatively to the product
him while out shopping. In fact, • Talk amongst themselves and with
you’ll know you have your persona the rest of the company using the
nailed when you recognize her at common language of the persona
a user function. and his needs
Overall, as each employee becomes
acquainted with their product’s
personas, their work reflects that
knowledge and the collaborative result
is a satisfying product and improved
product communications.
Common objections to personas Discovering “the right” personas As the personas were more
widely introduced, they became
Most cur rent development Back at WhizApp, I had permission to enriched with further persona
methodologies, including Agile proceed with the persona discovery. details based on others’ experiences
and the Rational Unified Process, as To identify the most useful personas, with the users. One very powerful
well some marketing methodologies, I first interviewed current, prospective contribution, for example, came
such as Behavioral Marketing, and former users as well as company from the customer support manager.
recommend a persona-driven managers and employees. Just as She pointed out that the secondary
approach. However, people often software development is a combination persona rarely called customer
initially doubt their value. of art and science, so is persona support, preferring to develop
discovery. more personal—and hence
• Sales and Marketing may be
more influential—relationships
concerned that attempts to build In addition to intuiting the users’
with the development and
the product for a particular user needs, skills, desires and environment,
marketing staff.
would limit or bias the product choosing the right personas requires
away from the many other an understanding of: Although that seems like a small
fields of use. detail, this user-initiated difference
• User interface design (particularly
helped explain how WhizApp
• Development and Product matching interface to user skills
personnel had arrived at such differing
Management, especially those and needs)
views of the users’ needs. They had
already using use cases and
• Product development and planning talked to different user groups—
scenarios, may object to having
processes independent of market segment—
more process and more paperwork
and that difference was captured
associated with their jobs. • Technology and product in the personas.
These common concerns can be development tradeoffs
Next, it was time for me to share the
allayed. The purpose of the persona • Business and sales personas with the entire Development
is to unite the developers’ image of
team. That introduction went smoothly
the user on a carefully chosen, realistic • Human psychology
as, once again, the personas were
example to support their efforts and
At WhizApp, I learned a great deal persuasive. The developers immediately
natural desire to create a product that
from the user base and from company realized that many of the user requests
satisfies the user. An appropriately
personnel. As anticipated, the personas they had perceived as contradictory or
chosen persona guides the product to
seemed to have been waiting for us to otherwise confusing, made sense in
address the common needs of the
uncover them. Within a short time, light of the different personas and
users, while taking nothing away from
I had a solid description of: their different environments. The
any market segment. A similarly well-
developers’ only questions were
chosen buyer persona helps Marketing • The primary persona, one secondary on how best to apply the personas
understand and address the needs and persona and one negative persona to their work.
biases of the buyer, again independent for DeskTop.
of market segment.
• Two primary personas for DataMine
While personas are different from (one was the primary persona for
use cases and scenarios, they can DeskTop) and a rough outline of
be used to derive excellent use cases the buyer persona.
and scenarios or even replace them.
By putting themselves in the persona’s
shoes, product managers and Introducing the personas
developers can think through the Now that I knew the personas,
user’s needs more realistically and I set about introducing them to a
nimbly than before. This empathy few of the managers. The reception
vastly reduces the need for overly was very positive. Each manager
detailed documents while also recognized the personas. They seemed
preventing off-target and inconsistent to have mapped the customers they
implementations. knew, the demands they heard, and
the environments they encountered HELLO.
directly onto the appropriate persona
Y N A M E IS:
and they agreed with the descriptions.
In fact, they were excited!
M