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Inspired by some of the answers to Michael Dubakov earlier question (Do you use Personas?).

I was wondering what datasources you used to create your personas? How would you describe creating a person to someone who's just starting out?

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Great question. The last set of personas that I produced were data driven, and were created from a number of different sources:

1. Questionnaire Data

  • Established usage profiles (amount used and proficiency of use)
  • Established the functionality of the webapp people actually used
  • Approximate workflows, so these could be represented on the persona and investigated in one to one interviews

2. User Interviews

  • We ran 10-15 contextual one-to-one interviews which helped generate quotes
  • Nuances in their workflows we're exposed during this stage (and helped refine our requirements catalogue!)

3. Project User Group

This was a set of senior stakeholders that we're used to test the theories we were coming up with about their user base. Being a large-ish company, we had to ensure everyone was on board:

  • We tested our assumptions from the User Interviews and Questionnaire Data with them using draft personas
  • This helped buy in, as they were actively involved in shaping the final output (with a steer, of course!)

4. Access logs to the webapp

  • This was analysed to give a broad brush insight into the quantity of use around different departments and shape our overall persona groups

5. Other information

We had an expert user of the system on the project that added extra insight into the user base, through the historical support and exchanges with them. This helped identify and clarify their pain points quickly.

Hope that helps!

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A couple of quick thoughts:

  • One very successful strategy for me: To write user personas about people who work in the mining industry, I interviewed the geology and engineering summer students, after the summer was over. I asked them to "imagine ONE real person in that workplace, but change their name, so let's call this person 'Robin'," and then I'd walk them through that person's day. What do they do first? Why? Who with? What problems occurred? Why? What did they do next? Why? Who with? Then ask about the exceptions. You need a recorder or note-taker beause you cannot interview attentively and take notes at the same time. The benefit of using students is they have fresh, untainted eyes. The drawback is that they are inexperienced. Therefore....
  • To check the understanding of the summer students, after you write up your various personas, have a barnraising-style review meeting with your SMEs and stakeholders. You get better engagement and feedback when the SMEs and stakeholders discuss the user personas than when they separately read them. Have markers and white-board handy, and expect rewrites. Iterating helps you get it right.
  • Get real photos from a service such as iStockphoto.com. It's cheap and here's why you should use real photos.

If you're wondering how many user personas you need, and if you're working on enterprise-wide products, then read How many user personas, a Five Sketches™ blog post.

I'm not affiliated with or paid by iStockphoto, but I am a long-time user. I write the Five Sketches™ blog posts.

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