This is certainly not the first time I’ve drafted personas for a project. I was part of the Sustainability-Inspired Innovation course last semester that involved work with personas, and my internship this summer also lent some experience in developing user profiles. Each iteration of this activity affords further insight into the philosophy of human-centered design, and this semester is no exception. The inclusion of journey maps was novel to me, and aided in developing the persona further.
Personas really helped to focus the scope of our project to the specific segment we had originally defined. In addition, the persona and journey map helped to visualize our target market and make them more relatable. These insights are expanded below:
Focus the scope of our project
Throughout the course of the project, I felt as if we were focusing a camera lens onto our target segment. At first, it was extremely blurry. We described our target as young, traveling millennials. Armed with just secondary research, we had a loose grasp on exactly who may fall under that categorization. Is this target active? How do they use their living space? Are they fulfilled in their social lives? Do they have a balance? These questions managed to evade significant answers during the secondary research phase, and therefore shrouded our understanding of our chosen target segment. So we dove into primary research. Now, it felt as if we were focusing the lens, but zoomed in too far to the micro-level. We were suddenly combing through hundreds of complicated, transcribed sentences, reading about extremely specific feelings in extremely specific scenarios. It was indeed extremely insightful, but it felt like trying to see an entire landscape from the perspective of a small animal on the ground. Developing the persona was an essential step to focus our metaphorical camera, where the depth of field could bring our target market into the picture. The picture appears to finally be clear. The persona was a great way to construct a fictional person, but think deeply about their attributes. In deliberating over their attributes, we were able to aggregate our findings into a cohesive bigger picture, and easily relate our persona back to our target market. To illustrate this concept, I think of our persona Brad’s work-life balance. Some of our interviews reflected a healthy balance, while some did not. For the purpose of innovation in a lifestyle-centric element such as housing, it made sense to incorporate Brad’s commitment to achieving a balance, and how that balance may be hindered by his lifestyle. That helped to focus our target segment, and their need for an outlet from a stressful work life.
Make our target relatable
Perhaps one of the more interesting elements that surfaced during persona creation was the satisfaction of relating a face to a set of characteristics. For me, it didn’t matter that the photo was simply a copyright-free stock image. Putting a name and face to our understanding of who falls into our target market was helpful in remembering a rather simple, but important, fact: Our segment is made of real people. To target a segment is to target a set of individuals. That means understanding where they come from, their likes, their dislikes, and their possible locations. But more importantly, that also means trying to understand their schedules, brand loyalties, and values. Creating the persona helped us ask some important questions, which helped put together some more pieces of the puzzle in understanding our target. For example, Brad’s base characteristics were derived from our understanding of our market formed through interaction during interviews. Some of those included college educated, no children, single, urban dwelling, and a professional services job. But when considering a more subtle aspect such as brand loyalty, we immediately related Brad’s description to brands such as Nike, Snapchat, and Hello Fresh. We related Brad to these brands because they are generally used by young people who are typically tech-savvy, health-focused, and conscientious. Those are some key ideas driven by our desire to further develop our image of our target market. Our journey map furthered our relation to Brad, forcing us to think about Brad’s physical experience with moving. We brainstormed thoughts, feelings, and even phrases Brad might experience in relation to making a move, and that further helped to cement our understanding of our target market.
Overall, personas and journey maps aided in creating empathy for our target. They helped to narrow our focus by negotiating base traits, and relate to our target by thinking beyond their characteristics into their values and their physical experience with housing. I feel these tools will continue to be helpful in the design process, and the future of user-centric marketing and business.