In the fast-paced world of design, where the best decisions revolve around what users want and need, personas can be a powerful tool to bring the complex landscape of intentions, behaviors, attitudes, and contexts into focus. Personas are a design tool for illustrating the range of users within a population in a concrete, memorable way that encourages empathy. Here at Centralis, we follow three key principles to create personas that bring real people into the design process:  

1. Base Your Personas on Primary Research (!)

While some might create personas using website analytics, market research reports, and educated assumptions, at Centralis, our personas come from primary research, not conjecture. We engage with real users by interviewing them or directly observing their activities and behavior. Our expert researchers probe beyond surface-level insights, delving deep into patterns and distinct differences, uncovering why people do what they do. The emphasis on authentic interactions ensures that our personas are not stereotypes but accurate representations of diverse user experiences.  

2. Focus on Only the Most Salient Dimensions  

Personas help companies know how to design more tailored and personalized user experiences because not all people are the same. Understanding how people follow patterns of differences gives companies a competitive advantage, creating experiences that fit different types of people with different needs and goals. 

However, not all differences are equal. Our team identifies the dimensions that truly impact the customer within their current context. While age, gender, and job titles may be relevant in specific cases, our personas center on the most salient dimensions concerning the client's product or service. We traverse the entire customer journey, dissecting each stage to identify patterns, pain points, and motivations influencing user decisions.  

Once we've identified various attitudinal or motivational dimensions, we focus on the dimensional pairing that reveals the critical differences across customers. The result is a set of personas that transcend superficial characteristics, providing a nuanced understanding of user needs and behaviors.  

From our grocery shopping study, we identified the two dimensions that impact the grocery shopping experience most significantly. One dimension was about shopping attitude, with those who see it as a necessary chore to finish as quickly as possible at one end and, at the other end, those who saw it as a leisurely activity they looked forward to. The second dimension was about spending habits, with one side being more budget-conscious and the other being willing to spend more on higher-quality food. Once we had two salient dimensions, we created an x-y graph and charted where each interviewee landed.

3. Craft Memorable Personas that Tell a Compelling Story  

Personas should be more than just data points; they should tell stories that evoke empathy, spark ideas for each user type, and provide a roadmap for our clients to make critical changes and capitalize on missed opportunities. Centralis invests time in creating descriptive titles for each persona group, recognizing that memorable personas are more likely to guide design decisions effectively. We strive to name our personas with one word, instantly capturing their distinguishing qualities.

Arriving at the perfect descriptor is hard work. As a team, we roll up our metaphorical sleeves to ensure each persona's name gets to the heart of the matter. In our grocery store example, we landed on “Foodies”, “Subscribers”, “Pragmatists”, and “Bargain Hunters”:   

Although we develop personas from observing real people, a persona is not based on one person – it is a composite of behaviors and needs. We always talk about personas in the plural to clarify that they represent more than one person and that there is variability within each persona group. Some agencies create personas with individual details, such as a first name, age, gender, and race, but this can easily conjure harmful stereotypes in the reader's mind. We aim to minimize those biases and stereotypes by presenting a persona as a plurality with a range of behaviors.     

At Centralis, persona creation is an art and science that harmonizes rigorous research with creative storytelling. By infusing empathy into every dimension, we help our clients design experiences that satisfy their users’ diverse needs and motivations. 

Would your business benefit from a robust set of personas? Our team will highlight the key differences in your customer base and provide detailed guidance for designing to best meet their needs. To learn more, please contact us via email or set up a call. We’d love to hear from you!