Personas

A short !uide to creatin! inspirational stories of real people

Persona development has become an important strategic tool within

innovative organizations.

Our point of view on personas and their relevance to inspirin! innovation will be

useful to decision makers who are considerin! usin! personas as a way of

drivin! innovation and cultivatin! empathy for your tar!et audience.

Stories of real people inspire innovation.

Effective storytelling inspires innovation through cultivation of empathy for the life and imagination of real people.

Stories lend meanin! to strate!y.

A participatory approach to persona development reveals character traits, themes, and scenarios that help us understand aspects of people’s lives and their dreams that lend meaning to their everyday experiences.

Stories have a structure. A story requires: –  One or more characters,

–  Who must make a decision(s) or take/refrain from action(s),

–  Which has/have consequences, foreseeable or otherwise,

–  Appropriate to and limited by his/her/their environment,

–  That resolve(s) or reveal(s) an underlying theme.

Storytellin! is an art. Great leaders are effective storytellers. Through storytelling, they provide direction and vision to their teams, who are typically used to working in silos.

Stories revolve around characters.

Storytellin! requires tools.

A participatory process of using persona caricatures to inspire innovation requires tools for: –  Enabling your target audience to tell

their stories;

–  Synthesizing the stories;

–  Inspiring the innovation team;

–  Socializing insights and ideas within your organization and amongst your other stakeholders outside of the organization to get a buy-in for the ideas.

Tools for enablin! your tar!et audience to tell their stories.

People share stories of their everyday experiences and the meaning those moments hold for them through: •  Their collections •  Journals, scrapbooks, and blogs •  Art •  Collages •  Cognitive maps •  Gossip •  Casual conversations with best friends •  Photos and videos •  Role playing •  Building blocks •  Day-in-my-life storyboards.

Tools for synthesizin! stories.

Understanding the commonalities, differences, congruencies, and paradoxes in people’s stories helps develop deep understanding of the diversity of mindsets and cultures we need to target. Understanding how people of distinct orientations behave and aspire helps us design experiences for people who are not like us.

Collating stories from vast amounts of text, photos, videos, and artifacts requires tools for organizing and making sense of that information. Multi-relational databases; clustering of Post-it notes; and coding and comparing visual and text-based records allows for recognizing traits of archetypal personas.

Tools for inspirin! innovation.

Effective portrayal of personas through immersive, inspiring, and insightful storytelling tools helps innovation teams guide their creativity with sensitivity to their audience’s social, cultural, and psychological framework.

Tools for viral marketin! of ideas.

Ideas don’t take root unless they are in circulation, constantly present in discussions and continually made sense of. Insights should be made widely accessible, and easily shared.

Organizing co-creation workshops, visually inspiring information displays in the corridors, putting video clips of the “voice of the customer,” and building easily accessible online documentation of the insights help virally market the concepts within the stakeholder group.

For years the debate about personas, segments, user types, and archetypes has been one of contention between researchers, with a bias towards either quantitative or qualitative methods for identifying and measuring different groups of people.

Industry practices Two paths

Segments serve to help understand the size of the group of people and the measures of their demographics, attitudes, and behaviors, and to help identify and prioritize the market opportunity around them.

We define segments as a quantifiably measured group of people.

Personas build stories and provide visual artifacts to allow organizations to immerse themselves in the lives of these segments so they can deeply relate to them as they develop products, services, and marketing strategies.

A persona is the qualitative profile of these segments, which makes them real and brings them to life.

Qualitative research Quantitative research Goal is description and understanding of people and their diversity.

Dozens of in-depth interviews and/or observation sessions.

Rich narratives describing attitudes, goals, behaviors, preferences, and pet peeves.

Images, audio, and video of the users’ environments and the artifacts they use.

Thousands of data points describing relationships and behaviors.

How and why they use the product and make decisions.

The context for their decision-making process, like advice from friends or data from third-parties.

Unmet needs and aspirations.

A deep level of understanding needed as input to a quantitative phase of segmentation.

Goal is generalizability and prediction across markets and populations.

Thousands of statistically valid data samples.

An understanding of the context-of-use occasions and how they impact experiences and expectations.

Behavioral, psychographic, and demographic data derived from surveys.

User behavior derived from use history.

How behaviors motivations, and needs map to populations.

Statistically valid data to guide decisions.

Value of a customer to the business.

Where, how, and why to reach them.

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Persona development Two paths

The best quantitative segmentation results have been derived when we consider a number of potential bases for the segments.

The results of quantitative segmentation engagements are more valuable when one enters it with a number of hypotheses about what could differentiate the market.

This process allows for exploration of several strategies.

Limited upfront exploration.

Companies start with a single hypothesis based on tribal knowledge (i.e., psychographics or needs, etc.).

Limited theoretical flexibility.

Segmentations are sometimes best served by blending components of a product experience (i.e., activities and benefits).

Limited analytical flexibility

One technique does not fit all.

Alternative analyses of the same data set can yield solutions that differ widely in applicability.

Doing qualitative research first helps enter segmentation engagements with a number of hypotheses about what could differentiate the market and how we explore several strategies.

Initial qualitative research provides the insights to develop a strong quantitative measurement tool. Without it, the quantitative tool will not include critical variables, thus being left with poorly defined segments.

What comes first The process of developing stories is sequential and iterative.

New insights can easily be incorporated; frameworks and explanations are flexible and evolve quickly.

Diligent collaboration with clients throughout the analytical effort is important.

A series of interim work sessions with key stakeholders as the analysis unfolds helps create ownership.

Qualitative research Quantitative research

Qualitative research to identify key variables for identifying segments (typically focus groups, one-on-ones, and some ethnographic methods).

Quantitative research to identify and prioritize the different clusters of people (on-line and telephone surveys).

Qualitative research to bring these segments to life (typically ethnographic research with both in-home and shadowing methods).

The ideal process

The process for developing truly useful personas is an iterative approach which alternates between qualitative and quantitative methods.

A good persona-development initiative should start with a qualitative phase to broadly understand a relevant population and the experiences surrounding them.

Too often we see clients begin a persona- development initiative with a quantitative segmentation study, without the insights of an in-depth understanding of all the behavioral, attitudinal, emotional, and experiential variables which truly define the differences between groups of people.

Often this initial phase focuses on gut assumptions about the segments, which inaccurately measure the audience because the wrong variables were identified and measured.

On the following pages we have provided examples of some of the persona projects we have conducted at SonicRim.

For the purpose of preserving the confidentiality of the projects, the details have been blurred.

Examples

Examples SonicRim has extensive experience crafting personas; almost every project we do contains some component of user profiles, and one in four projects are based around personas.

Given our extensive experience helping our customers identify opportunities, we know how to connect personas to ideation and design frameworks.

When multiple forms of collateral at a high- design fidelity are required, we partner with a creative agency to deliver professionally designed outputs.

Qualitative research!

Examples Personas can be thought of in terms of user-types, such that they are defined in terms of scenarios and experiences instead of demographics.

The following three slides illustrate one example of doing this.

Framin! story

Key usa!e scenarios

Representative / Inspirin! visuals

Examples

Behaviors relevant to the experience domain

Behaviors specific to this persona called out with

explanation

Comparison of personas across behaviors

Examples

Comparin! personas accordin! to relevant variables e.!. behavioral, work & life

conditions, etc.

Axes of variation

Correlations & dependencies (explanation of impact on

persona behavior)

Examples

Description of the role

Primary opportunity

Comparison of personas across roles and types of or!anizations

Examples

Snapshot of behaviors, and summary of persona

Examples

Timeline of relevant behaviors

Comparative framework for key behaviors

Inspira(onal  stories  of  real  people  are  best  narrated  through  fic(onal  characteriza(on  of  Personas.    Personas  evoke  empathy.    Personas  invite  ac(on,    Personas  give  decision  makers  and  designers  a  sense  of  purpose  in  direc(ng  their  crea(vity  in  making  a  difference  to  someone’s  life,    Persona  help  global  organiza(ons  develop  sensi(vity  for  regional  differences.  ""

Conclusion  

Inspirational stories of real people are best narrated through fictional characterization of personas.

Personas evoke empathy.

Personas invite action.

Personas give decision makers and designers a sense of purpose in directing their creativity in making a difference in someone’s life.

Personas help global organizations develop sensitivity for regional differences.

Prepared by

Our sincere thanks to

Our partners in quantitative research

Our partners in visual storytelling

Global Design Research

846 S. High Street Columbus, OH 43206 USA 877-298-6844 toll free 614-298-6844 phone 614-298-6858 fax

Contact: info@sonicrim.com

665 Third Street, Suite 410 San Francisco, CA 94107 USA 800-298-6844 toll free 415-565-0680 phone 415-565-0685 fax

http://SonicRim.com