Okay, everyone says they know who their target customer is…Many even say they have personas. Where does your team fit here?
Here are common pitfalls we see in most companies as they relate to effective personas (can you say “That’s us!” to any of these?):
- Focused on demographics – age, location, occupation, etc.
- It’s made up by an external vendor
- Your team has a couple documented, your UX team has some, there’s one the research department created….point being there are a few and not all consistent.
- Aren’t considered in day to day product decisions
- Cost a lot of money for beautifully designed artifacts (designed to be displayed)
- Lengthy (boring) descriptions or multi-page persona’s
- Haven’t been updated since being created years ago.
Does any of this sound familiar? It’s okay! It’s normal. We often don’t know how to build practical personas and understand how to use them on a day to day basis.
Here are some tips to apply tomorrow:
- Try using a template that works. Here’s one we’ve created (and have a whole workshop around.) Contact us if you’d like to take our course. Other templates work too, but make sure they aren’t exacerbating the problems mentioned above.
- Focus on behaviors and attitudes that are relevant to the task/problem you are solving… leave demographics for last if at all.
- Work with your broader team to finalize (don’t do this in a vacuum…include dev leaders, UX team, and research team members, if applicable.)
- Find a picture that best represents that persona. This will be the most memorable thing about the persona and what gets used most. Make it a good one. With a relevant background environment, facial expression, clothing, tools in hand, etc. Check out a really great example of visually oriented personas
- Post them up where everyone can see/utilize. See examples of how some companies have done this.
- Treat them like participants in a conversation when making product decisions…”Would [your persona’s name] actually find this valuable? What’s the problem she/he is facing and what’s the context impacting the solution we build?” Here is one example we use in our workshop that highlights a real world example of utilizing a persona in choosing a feature/design direction for an area of a small business software application.
You’d be surprised how many companies believe they have clear target customer definitions but when we poll the entire team (product managers, UX team, engineers, etc.) we get different definitions across the teams and different opinions about how/if those definitions are adhered to in decision making. That makes getting product decisions made quickly and in a way that “stick” almost impossible.
Start by polling the team… are you all on the same page?