How much effort do you really need to put into personas?
If you’ve been at the point of discovering your target audience, there is always the point of when you ask yourself whether you’ve done enough research. Using personas, it is recommended to do as much research as possible going very much in detail. Often companies either don’t have the time to do it properly or stop too early/late. So, the question is how much effort you should put into creating your personas.
First of all, let’s pick two approaches on how to do personas: Classic persona campaign and proto-personas (see Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf with Josh Seiden). The classic way includes a normal project with the steps of defining goals, doing all the research from initial market research to user research with quantitative and qualitative methods, organizational introspection etc., sorting information into categories, making conceptions, building persona skeletons, then posters and then set up a campaign to introduce the personas to the company. Proto-personas are set up the other way around. You first make assumptions about your users and then validate these with research.
Both methods have their pros and cons, so we will take a closer look into when it is better to use which method.
Starting with the classical persona campaign, usually you can spend weeks creating proper personas. This approach is very detailed as you have to not only define the purpose for your service and describe the user personally, professionally and technically, but also look into his or her motivations. A lot of research is needed and many methods such as brainstorming and user research are used and then you still need to condense and refine the findings. This way you will get a lot of answers on initial, but also upcoming questions as your personas will serve you also as decision guidance.
The key to this method is a good planning. You have to create a timetable for every step to not get lost along the way and stop researching when you have found the answers to your questions. So, define the questions for each step ahead and as soon as you’re satisfied with the answers you’ve found, move on to the next point. Here, it is also handy to define what level of detail you expect your answer to be. Otherwise you might not be sure, if you should go deeper into a question or leave it with a more or less simple answer.
In which cases should you go for the classical approach? Basically, this is the right approach for you, if
you’re in a more or less established company
there is a bigger project
within a longer period of time
Why? The larger the company, the more divisions you have and thus it makes sense to create a persona campaign to introduce the personas to every employee to get the most out of the tool. Then, the bigger the project, the more it is important to plan everything ahead as good as possible and also have a pretty clear vision of whom you making it for. Further, the more time you have, the more it makes sense to go into detail or at least always revise what you’ve done so far.
Coming to proto-personas, this is almost the opposite way to create personas. You set up the first version of your personas in a few hours and test them afterwards during the process of your project. The way to go here is to sit down with your project team and make assumptions about your personas in a simple brainstorming session. Then, everyone will make a persona on his or her own and after this you will merge your assumptions and make the first final batch of your personas. Using this method, you only need to fill in four fields on a piece of paper being a sketch and name, behavioral demographic information, pain points and needs and potential solutions.
The idea behind this method is a lean procedure saving you time. If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup by Eric Ries, maybe you’ve also heard of Lean UX. If not, I can highly recommend it as an addition (see above). One big topic is validated learning and one of the ways to achieve that is testing assumptions. However, it is crucial to use the right metrics to measure your assumptions, otherwise it may lead to wrong outcomes. So, you definitely should be a bit in the topic of how to work lean, to be able to use that method efficiently.
When should I use this method then? This would be your way to go, if
you’re in a startup or small company
there is a smaller project or new features for an existing product
within a short period of time
Why? Startups usually are more flexible and have smaller teams, so that everyone can get involved and there is no need to present a “campaign” afterwards. One disadvantage of proto-personas can be that you guessed wrong and realized this quite late so that it is better to use this method for smaller projects or only new features except if you are pretty sure about your assumptions or already have some reliable background information. The last point is pretty obvious, if you don’t have enough time you have to come up with ways to be more efficient. However, you really have to work precise and know the pitfalls here.
Now, you know some of the key factors to decide on how much effort you have to put into your next project for creating personas. Do you agree or have something to add?