We all know how awesome user personas are. They help all the king’s men — designers, researchers, product owners, stakeholders, investors, on and on — understand a particular user type’s behaviors, needs, goals and motivations. Personas also focus everyone’s attention on the bigger picture rather than the minutest of edge cases. Further, they empower us to empathizewith our end-users, to the point that we want to make Rob the Accountant’s life not only easier, but also happier, more successful, more exciting.
When Alan Cooper introduced personas as an effective UX design tool in his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, they became almost indispensable. Almost.
Because we also know how hard it is to focus on user research when all we want is to see another iteration of design, another wireframe, another prototype. Especially when the usersnecessary to the user research are super-busy subject matter experts who barely have time to get their day jobs done, and are also tasked with “helping out” product teams or R&D teams or even just little old design teams — meaning they’re spending their nonexistent free time on feature proposals, requirements gathering, scrum meetings, and all the other time-consuming activities that make up solid, dedicated product design.
The last thing they have time for is to spend hours with a user researcher answering a litany of questions about who they are, what they want, and how they think.
So, when informing a fully fleshed-out persona is as daunting to your end-users and SMEs as the proverbial root canal, take it one step at a time. Break the research down into little bite-sized pieces your SMEs can tackle in less than 10 minutes. You’ll be surprised how responsive they are when you show that you’re accommodating them. Because the truth is they want to help; they want to do the right thing and get the designers everything they need; they just don’t have the time.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help your SMEs help you when creating personas.
1. Create a template. Figure out what you need to include in a persona that will be valuable to your designers — staples like needs, goals, pain points, and nuanced bits like org structure, softwares used, skills. Create from this list a template outlining each section, with examples for each.
2. Break it down. For each section, create one or two questions your users can answer in less than 10 minutes. For example, under the Pain Points section, you can ask “What frustrates you in your job? (e.g., softwares, resources, etc.) Please rate on a scale from 0–10 how frustrating each pain point is.”
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