A recent client hired us to revise the personas they had created. The departments using them had sent the personas back to the product marketing managers with the complaint that the personas were: “Nice, but completely useless.” The company was in danger of deciding to abandon personas entirely, so we started with conversations about what “useful” meant to that company. Although they never said it directly, we eventually inferred that they wanted the personas to provide certain constructive constraints to fuel marketing ideas.
“I play better tennis because the court is there.” —Robert Frost
The purpose of personas is to engender innovation by supplying limitations. The purpose of personas is to illuminate opportunities for new and better ideas. The purpose of personas is to distill customer data down to a narrow but accurate field of ideas that will have the best chance of success.
How? Part One: A Set of Limitations
- Personas describe the distinguishing attributes of the group of people who will use or buy your product. They narrow the field (market), define the market, and describe it in detail.
- Personas describe the goals of the people who use or buy your product. They focus employees’ attention on relieving any frustration that customers experience when they use or buy your product.
- Persona scenarios describe exactly what people who use or buy your product do to achieve their goals. They show specific “moments” when there is an opportunity to satisfy customers better.
Those attributes, goals, and scenarios provide limitations; they act as Frost’s tennis court. They give your company the opportunity to close the gap between what customers currently experience and what they would enjoy more (even if they don’t know it yet). Personas engender innovation by highlighting that gap and by showing that gap in a human context, as close to reality as possible.
How? Part Two: A Custom-Made Tool
Although personas represent customers by translating customer data, they are fashioned and formed from the goals of the employees who must use them. Personas are only useful if they are crafted out of the organization’s goals. Personas must be a useful tool in the hands of the employees who are charged to innovatively close the gap. Persona scenarios must show details (based on customer research) about typical customers engaged in typical activities: how a user sets up a new account; how a buyer gathers pricing information; how and why a user determines when to charge a draining battery; or how and why a buyer decides to place an order on your web site versus over the phone. Personas and their scenarios must illustrate customers’ goals so that your employees can work within the limitation of having to satisfy those goals.
If a persona or set of personas does not elicit better messaging, sales processes, product designs, or web site navigation (to name a few kinds of innovation), then the personas have failed. If employees don’t find the personas useful, then they are just another “interesting” customer profiling effort destined for the round file.
Our client’s product marketing managers worked with us to define what “useful personas” would actually be able to do, and together we found that the “nice” personas needed scenarios that showed specifically how customers compared competitors’ products. Once clarified, the newly relevant personas helped the client’s marketing teams focus on creating better comparison tools. When we followed up later, the client said: “Yes, the new personas help. A lot!”
"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work . . ." —Rollo May
Angela,
Another awesome post. Today, we're finding many personas being created for the sake of having a "profile" of a user or buyer. You eloquently point out that usefulness is the key criterion and that personas must correlate to a specific set of organizational goals and issues. Nicely done!
Tony Zambito
Posted by: Tony Zambito | May 12, 2008 at 02:25 PM
If employees don’t find the personas useful, then they are just another “interesting” customer profiling effort destined for the round file.
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