My Life in Practice

What is a persona?

We can think of this with many terms, a user, a buyer, a customer. It is a virtual representation of a real person that could be a consumer of your product or service.

What goes into a “good” persona?

The biggest thing is that the persona needs to be authentic. Can you image an actual person that fits the mold that you are imagining? If asked, could you go outside and find a representative person in the wild?

The persona should help you test your value proposition without being written to prove your proposition is valid. The jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) or problem statement should match what a real person might say they want. Their alternatives should be reflective of how they are solving this problem today. This will drive your value proposition.

In the context of Hypothesis-Driven Development, Alexander Cowan says, “if you don’t know specifically who you’re designing for (which persona), anything you accomplish is mostly good luck.” ¹

How do I create these personas?

Alexander Cowan also gives a valuable method to create these personas in his tutorial about personas. There are 5 steps: dump, sort, screen, reality check, draft.¹

Dump: I find this step quite valuable. Just start putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). They can be personas that you think fit into your ideal consumer box, who may fit into it, or who many not fit at all. Do not spend too much time on this. It should be a rough sketch of these personas.

Sort: Next up is to rank these persona shells against your initial value proposition. Start with the ideal and work your way down to least ideal.

Screen: A good screening question will help you weed out people you may interview to determine if they match your persona or do not match. There is not a need to conduct a full interview on someone who does not match the persona you are working on. Determine the threshold for that question, what is the line in the sand?

Reality Check: Above, I mention that the persona should be authentic. Now that you have your list, Alexander Cowan recommends that you write down at least 5 real people that would fit in the box.¹ He even suggests that you be able to take a picture of those people. Now I am a bit of a recluse, so I did rely on the internet to find suitable pictures.

Draft: Now you are ready to draft your personas. Be creative. What kind of clothes do they wear? How do they spend their time? What motivates them in life?

¹ https://www.alexandercowan.com/tutorial-personas-problem-scenarios-user-stories/