Building user personas that work: Part 1

There seems to be some debate over the benefits of user personas and whether or not they do in fact provide real insight from which to build a product or feature around.

I won’t go into the arguments here, but I think it’s fair to say that in order for them to be genuinely effective, they need to be created in a very specific way. It’s a focused but fairly simple approach; heavy on the data, easy on the short fiction writing.

Everything that appears in your persona must be explained and backed up by data, research and hard evidence. Be ruthless with your own assumptions; poke holes in the data, try and break it. It’s vital that you keep the persona you create absolutely rock solid. After all, if you can’t justify it to yourself then how would you expect to justify it to a stakeholder?

Given all this, you’d think that the best place to start when creating user personas is research. Research, research, research. Well, actually — probably controversially — I disagree. Instead I find it an incredible useful experience to create an initial persona based on your preexisting assumptions as to who your users are, how they behave when using your site and so on.

By approaching the task in this way, you’ll be reminded that your preconceived notions are usually completely and utterly unreliable (sorry about that, they just are). But it’s a good way to help you discover which questions you need answers to and where the gaps in your knowledge truly lie.

If you are to work this way, I should reiterate; you have to be honest enough to rip that persona to shreds, even if it means a difficult conversation with your stakeholders. You must challenge every single piece of information you write down. To use a scientific analogy, this is your starting hypothesis; now you have to go out and prove it.

So, just how do you go about doing that? Well, gathering together an almighty arsenal of research tools definitely helps. Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, UserTesting — among others of course — are all your allies here. Make as much use of them as you can and validate your findings with cross-platform research. If GA is telling you one thing, try and find a way to validate it with a secondary research tool. Now obviously this isn’t going to work in all cases, but you know you can never have enough data.

If you’re feeling brave, you can even dip a toe into the murky world of user surveys. When done right, they can be an excellent way to bring some qualitative feedback to the party, and the answers you receive can be used to flesh out your persona to make them feel more human. But, when done wrong they can be an absolute car crash, so watch out.

Once you have all your tools lined up, you’re ready to start testing that hypothesis. In part two, I’ll go over some of the key areas to address when creating user personas, how to ensure the data is watertight as well as provide some tips how to layout the finished article.