Constructing persona out of interviews
If done right, persona greatly improves design decisions
Persona delivers a coherent story of a target user segment out of the relevant user research to inform design decisions.
Once all interviews are done, there is a need to aggregate findings in a concise way to transfer insights into creation phase of the design process.
I have already described 2 ways to extract insights from interviews:
And this post offers you a 3rd —, shall I say, more classical way to do it- through constructing personas.
Now, I know personas are critiqued a lot these days, the same way as focus groups. My take on this — use what you think brings value to your process.
I wanted to have an experience of creating persona the way the creator of this design tool taught — Alan Cooper. For more details, refer to About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design.
So, here what I have done in the very methodical way to construct personas for my project.
1. Group interviews by distinct roles
In my project I have 2 roles:
- Postpartum mom — primary persona;
- Maternal advocate — secondary persona
2. Identify behavioral variables
- Activities — so, what we call “jobs-to-be-done”
- Attitudes — how the user thinks, feels
- Aptitudes — education, training
- Motivations
- Skills
I also add:
- Pain points/Needs (influenced by Value Proposition design) .
3. Map interviewee to behavioral variables
I used excel to map and spot the pattern on
4. Define goals
Life goal — who the user wants to be;
End goal — what the user wants to do;
Experience goal — how the user wants to feel.
5. Aggregate patterns into a coherent story, add photo
No artificial stock photo, please. Try to find something decent on Flickr CC.
And here is the result:
Personas won’t replace the design challenge statement that gives a clear focus for Ideation phase, but it can help to build empathy before the team ideates possible solutions.
Read next post where I will share how I have used a combination of 3 methodologies of “making sense” (Value proposition design, IDEO, Personas) to give focus to solo-ideation session. I will also explain — why solo-ideation too.
This is a post from series #productdesign where I practice product design and customer development.
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