“The word ‘persona’ comes from Greek and means ‘mask’. When we work with” personas, we assume the mask of the users to understand their needs concerning a new product. To walk in the user’s shoes gives you an idea about what their wishes are, and how they will use the new product, whether it is a digital product or a non-digital product”.
Lene Nielsen, in Personas, a book published in 2019 by Springer London.
The research visit was kindly funded by Network Institute
Lene, to introduce our conversation about personas: What is a persona?
A persona is a description of a fictitious person that could exist but does not. It's most often based on data, either qualitative or quantitative data.
So, we should have some data to build a persona.
In my opinion, yes. I know that are people who disagree, but in my opinion, we should have data. Otherwise, it will just be imagination, and it will be too fictitious. As a method, personas are research-based.
Indeed. However, in your talk on new trends in personas, you mentioned that the 'non-use' of data to build personas we could see that it is becoming quite common. How often do you see this happening?
I think, in practice, it’s more common than we expect. The whole Lean UX has started this trend that you don’t need to do a lot of research upfront, but you can do the research later. This is why a lot of companies just jump into doing personas based on their own assumptions. But what happens is that they never get beyond that, so they never have time to actually do the research, so they stay on their assumptions. And often, your assumptions are really, really wrong.
Therefore, the consequences are a disaster.
It's a disaster. It's a disaster because, of course, they realize that they might have different target groups, but they don't realize what is really the differences in the target groups. To whom should we really pay attention?
Why do you think this trend of not using data initiated? Because, in the beginning, developing personas was very research-oriented and grounded on data. What has happened on the way?
It's the same with all methods when we go out in the field. Because time is so constrained, we jump to conclusions. It's the same with usability. Now you do fewer studies and fewer tests. We used to have a whole framework based on research. But it's when it trickles down to practice that a lot of the heavy work is forgotten or made different, or there are many time constraints. It's like the management can't really see the benefit of doing research because it costs money.
And it's not visible.
It is not visible in the end product. You just want to build something. And even though you can say a lot of the public institutions, they demand, sometimes you see that it's written into the contract that they must do personas. But then again, the contracts are so big, and the personas might never be used, and they're not based on proper research and all that.
Another topic that popped up during your talk was automated personas. Can you tell us more about this trend?
It's interesting because you now have more or less easy access to large amounts of data and because of all the computational methods you can use. A group in Qatar has created these automated personas. This generation automatically pulls in data from social media, generates the personas from it, and gives them attributes such as name, age and photo. And they are live updated. I mean, they can change within hours. So, if you look at them one hour, the next hour, they will be different because the data is live updated. And that's a benefit compared to the old-fashioned way of doing it. I did studies where I could see that companies changed their personas every second year because it's so expensive to do all the research. And, of course, depending on the target group, the groups don't change that much. Like many companies, they do personas on their workforce because of the change in the IT system going from legacy systems to other systems. That doesn't change a lot. But of course, if you're looking at social media, it changes all the time and interest and behaviours might change really, really rapidly. So there is this idea of how we can actually automate the process and get data in really, really fast to see both the present target groups and the changes in the target group interest.
You mentioned that the method changed from when you started your studies on personas. When did you start it, and how did you discover it?
Yeah, it's a weird start because I thought this was how to do it. I have a background in film script writing, and when you write a film script, you first have to draft the whole story and introduce all the characters in the story by describing them. It was in the days of multimedia. I don't know if you remember, we had CD-ROMs and everything. In those days, I was hired to create multimedia, and I didn't know much about it. So, I thought: 'okay, I'll go on like it, would describe what the product should be like, and then I'd create a description of whom is going to use it' because that's what we do in a film. Then I realised I was onto something because we got funding, and those who invested the money could understand the program. And then I thought I had invented something. Then, I realised we were just a lot of people worldwide talking about the same way of doing it. And these stories were called scenarios. And later on, I realised that this description of the user we call personas. So I was just doing it. I thought that was the way of doing it. And then I pursued it, and I've been pursuing it ever since.
And for sure, you've been impacting the field and transforming it. What do you recognise as your main contribution to the field?
I think my main contribution, which I want to revert to, is the connection to creating characters in films. It is about how you perceive another person when it's fictitious and when it's written when it's on paper. How should you paint that picture of another person? So you actually feel they can become alive, and you still have very limited space. The reader has very limited time to read it, and still, they need to understand that this could be an actual living person. It could be somebody they would meet in the street. So this is what I studied when I did my PhD. And because I've been looking so much into use personas, now I want to revert to it and then look again into it. What is it, actually? What does it take to write, describe another person and use some of the tools from playwriting and film script writing? Again, looking into that, how can we implement that four personas?
If a person wants to learn how to build a persona, where to find information? Is there are specific courses that one could take?
It's interesting because some years ago, we studied it in Denmark. Where did people learn about the tool? It was peer learning, and we noticed an ingenious way to do it in Denmark. Also, we could see that people learn from each other and use the same template. It was like one has started something, and then they built upon it. So hardly a few had learned from school or university, but most came into a company, and they created personas and left and went to the next company. And they brought the method with them. So, there are no courses. I tried to create courses, but people didn't seem interested, and a lot learn from the university. And unfortunately, what they do is that the most because they don't have time to do research, so they're told just to create personas based on their assumptions.
Do you think this is maybe an explanation for why they prefer not to do research?
I think it's more because of the whole lean UX. Yeah, that has greatly influenced the Agile method of acting fast, and I think that's more influential. But I do meet people who think this is how you do it because they were taught that way in university courses.
What is necessary for us to build a persona? What is, like, essential? When creating a persona, what should we always remember about it?
You should always remember who is actually going to use the personas because that's a huge difference, whether it's marketing or development. So, who is going to use it? Is it for educational purposes? Because it depends on what kind of information you should put into the description. And it might vary a lot. People in software development are not interested in brand awareness, so they need other information. It's really important to consider who is going to use it. Who is going to use these descriptions, and for what are they going to be used? So, to understand the persona and end users, we try to understand the system, end users or communication end users or whatever we use them for. That is as important as creating the personas because otherwise, they will never be used.
That's true. And it's usual.
I see that marketing departments own all the research in many companies. So they create the personas and skip them off to all the departments. And then there might be information that you can't use and get marketing to talk to systems development because many large companies are organised in silos. That could be a struggle. But I do know of companies who now have started to communicate with marketing and ask them to get the information they need so they can create their own personas.
So marketing will be like building the research.
Yes. Providing the research to other departments and then they can create the personas, and also the departments can act, ask for specific information and data they want to have.
You mentioned large organisations. Do large organisations benefit more from personas? Or are small companies also benefiting from the method?
Yeah, I know loads of the startups. They do have personas, but they are often very sketchy. They need something just to get started. And, of course, they are in such a hurry and are under such pressure that they don't have time to do proper research. And I do understand that. And just having an aligned understanding what who we are actually developing this for is better than nothing or that people will eat their own understanding. So, all the new startups have some sort of personas.
That's true. I think in all these startup events, in all these events fostering innovation, they actually require you to build some sort of personas and a storyline.
Yeah, so you show that you have considered whom the company will serve.
And prove that the market exists and is not something you created or made up. In that sense, to be prepared for using personas, if someone wants to increase and develop skills and learn about personas, what should this person look for?
First, you look for who will use them and how they will use them. For information, there are so many articles online. I just Googled persona templates, and you can learn a lot from looking at how different companies present their personas. Of course, from looking at the templates, you can't fully understand how they developed the method. So, I recommend reading my book. Also, next spring, there will be a very large chapter in a six-volume HCI book. And then, there's interaction-design.org, which has some short introductions to personas. But there are a lot of discussions, and you can easily end up in a discussion for or against personas—those you should avoid.
You said to look over the internet. However, it takes time to discover what is valuable and what's not.
Yeah. Also, if you use Google Scholar, there are so many papers. When you use Google Scholar, I advise looking at the domain that interests you. If your domain is health or children or education and you use that together with personas, then you might get better results because there are fewer articles on each domain, which might be the most valuable.
Our final question: what is the biggest challenge in creating a persona?
Getting them used.
Oh, really? So there's nothing to do with the process of building the persona.
It's going from the persona to the use. What kind of method do you want to use? So what is your company working with? What kind of methods do the service design, and how do you get them into the customer journey? Do you work with agile practices? How do you get them into the user stories? Whatever? How do you get them into the everyday methods and tools you use in your practice? How to have that link and get management to take the point of departure in the personas when they discuss strategy? So all these everyday issues of getting them in the discussions about the other tools and methods you use. That's the biggest obstacle. Because that's where you see the benefit, but that's also the hardest.
Yeah, I can imagine. Having people onboard is always a challenge.
Yeah. And, of course, there are other smaller issues like representation and how to design them. And all that. That is something you can overcome. But then getting them used to that is the biggest hurdle.
That's great. Thank you, Lene.
You're welcome.
Interview by Gislene Feiten Haubrich