Persona Building

Why should you use this template?

Personas, whether they be for a buyer profile or a user flow, are powerful documents that aim to keep your eyes on the prize. 

Properly validated (data-driven) personas unlock valuable insight at every stage of the product development process. Personas guide research strategy, participant criteria, and marketing efforts. 

This template contains the essential elements of a data-driven persona, but consider what other data sources you have available to incorporate in this exercise. 

The utility of this particular template comes from personas’ need for consistent updates to maintain representative of your customers. So, you’ll likely need to run this test at the very least annually, and you’ll have this handy template to help you!

 

Testing Outcomes

• Chart the current state of your customer base.
• Reduce ambiguity surrounding customer needs and challenges.
• Amplify real customers’ voices to inform your product team.

 

Organization Benefits 

• A solid foundation on which to flesh out full-scale personas
• Strengthens relationship between your brand and the market

 

Test Questions

1. What is your household income?
   Multiple Choice
   When presenting sequenced multiple choice options, be sure to give ranges so that participants are more comfortable with answering.
2. How often do you take out loans?
   Likert Scale
   These quantitative scales can work hand-in-hand with the multiple choice questions above to compare answers across similar questions.
3. Which of the following are you most likely and least likely to take out a loan for?
   MaxDiff Question
   Adding the right context to this question is key for promoting the right mindset for participants.
4. Which of the following best describes your living situation?
   Multiple Choice
   If you are already aware of the challenges that your customers face, this could be a rank-order question instead.
5. Rank these factors from Most Important to Least Important when it comes to your online experience.
   Rank Order
   Being able to sort personas based on priorities and preferences is key.

 

Additional Questions

• What is your educational background?
• How would you describe your personal demographics?
• Walk me through your career path thus far.
• What industry does your organization serve? / do you work in?
• What is the size of your company?
• What is your job role? Job title?
• Whom do you report to? Who reports to you?
• How do you measure success?
• What are your biggest challenges?
• What are you responsible for?
• How do you learn new information about your job?
• What do they value in their personal or professional life?