Humanising users through dynamic personas
Who are users?
When we talk about users of a product or service, we are referring to a person who interacts with or is affected by a system of some sort. I’m sometimes reminded that the other terms for “user” relate to someone with a drug dependency or who takes advantage of another. So it’s not exactly the nicest word that we should be using for people whom we strive to solve problems for.
I’ve called users “people” or “humans” in the past, but I always find myself coming back to “users” because invariably we need a catch-all term for everyone in the system. When we talk about an individual, we get to be more specific and can refer to them as a customer, employee, patient, student, and so on. For me at least, the term “user” is staying.
Personas vs segments
Ok, with that out of the way, how can we make users feel more human and relatable? With a lot of differing opinions about personas, I thought I might explore some of my thoughts and how I use them in my practice.
It’s widely accepted that by giving a user a name, face, and story, we become more emotionally connected with them even if they are fictitious characters. This is called “personal bias” and being aware of this is crucial to empathising with our users so we can understand their problems and create better products and services for them.
I’ve always found personas useful when working with clients who regard their users more as market segments or who have difficulty relating to their users in general. In my experience, research and media companies set the benchmark by which many organisations segment their users, and with no viable alternative, this becomes the de facto method of splitting up user types.
In the above example from Experian, I admit to some schadenfreude when observing the “diversity” of the different Mosaic segments:
When looking at an audience through the lens of a service, product, or Job to be Done (JTBD), rather than an advertising campaign, we really start to see the benefit of using a persona. If I’m working with a client who knows their target customer quite well, then the process of creating a persona is generally straightforward (as well as being a fun and worthwhile workshop). If the client’s product or service has broad appeal and the entire population is a potential customer, then the process becomes more challenging. In that case, we may need to evolve a segment into a persona through interviews and research. We may also need to create several personas (some primary, some secondary), but usually, we start with one.
Motivation
Once we are happy that our persona broadly reflects our target audience, I will add a motivation and back story as to how they arrived at their current mindset. They won’t change their behaviour spontaneously, for no reason. They may be being pushed away from a previous behaviour (a price hike from their current supplier) or pulled to a new behaviour (a competitor offering a discount for new customers).
Dynamic personas
In addition, an existing customer will have different needs and expectations than a new customer, despite being demographically identical. This is where I add their “stage” in the life cycle as an additional dimension as they move through the user journey. You can see this at the bottom of the sample persona opposite. This stage will also refer to a phase in the customer journey map that will be created at a later date.
The stage in which the user is in makes the persona dynamic
I think this is relevant as a customer will have different motivations on day one versus a year later when they decide to leave, for example. A patient will be in a very different mindset at the moment of receiving an initial appointment, versus being given a life-changing, negative diagnosis. The person is still the same, but their situation or the job they’re trying to do changes. This is why I refer to these personas as dynamic.
For more information on how dynamic personas fit within the larger Design Thinking process, or to talk about your business, drop me a message or schedule some time for a free consultation.
