When you feel stuck in a corporate mindset or need to reboot a product or service, a persona can help! Personas help you build empathy for the people you serve, and ensure that you are putting their needs first — before politics, bureaucracy, or the needs of your organization.
Exploring your services from a people-centered perspective will help you better communicate and serve a particular group of people.
- Identify Stakeholders
- Develop a list of several groups of people who are involved with, benefit from, or directly receive your services or products.
- Name
- Based on your experience, give each stakeholder group a name, a face (this can be drawn or found from an image search online), and a list of demographics & descriptors.
- Develop
- For each group, build one persona, listing key obstacles & opportunities related to the services you offer them. For example, Chris the CEO travels up to 50% of the year, spends most of his work life in meetings, and has to get most of his initiatives board-approved.
Tips for Creating Effective Personas
When brainstorming the motivations and realities of a customer group, you will certainly rely on people you know and past experience. In order to avoid stereotyping, follow these guidelines. Personas should be:
Recognizable and relatable
As real as a character in a novel or a movie
Representative, not authoritative
