Hyper Diary: How to define personas, the user-centered way
I had seen personas before and even developed a few as well. However I have never developed personas the user-centered way. Let me show you how we did it.
First step: Ask questions
We were briefed to research a target group. To get a better understanding of this group and how to cater to their needs, we developed questions that would help us get to know them better. So instead of doing desk research about behaviours and tendencies of this demographic. We actually went out and asked the target audience how they felt about certain topics and how they felt about our client for example. What did they like about their service and what didn’t they like, but most importantly, why did they feel that way.
Second step: Cluster the answers in themes
In order for us to make sure our personas would not be based on a single very interesting interviewee or single interesting thought, we clustered the answers and looked if there were certain themes or tendencies that kept coming back. The answers that related were related within a topic were grouped and formed a theme. So we did not form themes beforehand, they formed itself based on recurring topics. These themes are the foundation of what we based our personas on.
Third step: Look at the valence of the answers
Even though a lot of people in our research have talked about the exact same topics, that does not mean that everyone has the same idea or valence towards these themes. For example if two people have said something about meat, however the one says that he loves meat and the other said he dislikes meat. So the theme would be meat, but you would have to form two personas to represent both answers. Even within one answer you can find out why a person likes/dislikes something. One dislikes meat because of the taste for example and the other dislikes meat out of principle.
Fourth step: Combine the answers into personas
If you have your themes and answers with certain valence towards the themes, then you can combine these into (what you feel are) logical personas. We made them in a way that everything this persona feels and thinks, aligns with their views. We did this so that the persona would not have any internal discrepancies. This way we could develop personas that have their own likes, dislikes, preferences and ideas.
Fifth step: Make your personas visual
In order for someone to get a clearer view of your personas, it is a good idea to visualize them. This way your personas become more real.
Conclusion:
As you can see, this way of making persona’s is based purely on what the audience told us. By using qualitative research methods to get a deeper understanding of what the needs and desires of our audience is, we were able to develop personas that best represent them. By using this method instead of using questionnaires you can find more about why people like or dislike something, by giving them time and space to organically come up with an answer. This makes it easier to follow up and go deeper into understanding them.
