Exploratory research for modeling personas

Estimated time to read: 6 minutes

Published on December 21, 2017 and updated on November 06, 2021.

As close from its customers as organizations may be, it is extremely hard to have profound knowledge on who they are and what are their expectations with products and services that they consume. Given the difficulty to ask all the customers and potential customers about their needs, organizations are betting on the idea of having representatives of people inside their facilities that advocate for their interests. These “representatives of the people” are called personas.

Personas are archetypes. They materialize groups of people with certain characteristics, tastes, needs and desires. They aren’t people in flesh and bones, but representations that accompany people within an organization. Personas have traits from which people can relate to. These common traits are meant to help organizations to see the world using the eyes of their consumers so they can better understand how customers behave, what do they do, what do they think, what do they speak, what do they feel, what are their needs and what are their desires. This level of understanding is used to drive decisions within organizations, from the way customer service works to product development.

Personas are not made up based on what organizations believe they know about their customers. Personas are uncovered based on knowledge gathered from real people that interact with the product or service. This knowledge can be obtained from different sources, being the most efficient and cheap a good and old conversation.

Research to uncover personas

Researching people to get to know them is a task prior to any other. If neglected, chances are that new products or services will have no use for anyone. Research, though, needs careful planning in order to fulfill its role when mapping personas. Create and do research is a procedure that will have at least the following steps:

Define the objective: what should be learned after the research;
Define hypotheses: what knowledge the team already have that could be used;
Define research methods: which methods will be employed to conduct the research;
Recruit participants: how participants will be recruited;
Collect data: how research will be done;
Document results: how research data will be used.

Define the objective

The objective serves as a guide of what is expected to be learned after conducting the research. This will in turn guide the following steps.

Define hypotheses

If there is a briefing, a sketch or any other document with information about the target audience, such information can be useful to generate hypotheses that will further guide the process of uncovering information.

Define research methods

Research can be done in many ways. Interviews, focus groups, card sorting, questionnaire, ethnography and shadow customer are some possible methods. It is the way by which information will be collected. Each one have its uses, advantages and disadvantages.

Recruit participants

Recruiting is delicate because if not done correctly, result data can not properly represent the target audience. Besides recruiting the target audience, it is important to know the sample size that will be studied and how they will be rewarded for being subjected to the research.

Collect data

Do research, considering the previous steps.

Document results

Research data can be stored on many forms that vary from audio recordings to handwritten notes. Dedicating time to store this information in a structured repository ensures that the organization have access to it.

Knowing people

Of all possible ways to do research, the best ones are the ones that allow for in person meetings for at least two reasons:

It is possible to register corporal language and voice tone;
It is easier to change the course of a conversation and gather different data, if necessary.

There are many types of in person research, being in depth research the best one to map personas. This research method have a script and known duration. Participants are told up front that they will participate in a research and that they will be compensated for it. Rewarding participants is important, as this creates the necessary stimulus for joining the cause. Scripts for depth research have no standard format, but an example could have the following sections:

Objective: what kind of information should be known at the end of the research;
Target audience: which profile will be interviewed;
Estimated duration: estimated time that the interview will take;
Topics: topics that will be discussed during the interview.

Interviews usually start with an opening section, which makes participants more comfortable, and end with an open question, which is used to collect information that was not asked during the interview. Opening questions aren’t necessarily tied to the main objective, they can be questions like:

It was hard for you to get here? (the place in which the interview is being conducted);
What do you work with?

And a possible question to end the interview:

Is there something else you would like to talk about?

Between the opening and closing questions, are asked questions related to the study. These are the questions that, when answered, will give the required information. Interviewers can choose not to follow the script as it is if there is room to explore topics that were not previously thought. The script, in this case, is called semi structured. There is a script, but it is adjusted along the interview. Besides this, there are structured and unstructured scripts. A structured script is similar to a questionnaire and unstructured is more like an informal conversation.

This type of research is usually done by two people: a moderator, responsible for talking and interacting with participants, and a facilitator, which write down everything that is happening during the interview, as well as corporal expressions that were displayed by participants.

Persona mapping

There isn’t a standard way to research and map personas. This varies with each organization, but processes follow a similar logic. When data is collected, research teams organize it using a map that trace commonly observed traits, or behaviors. One way to categorize this information is creating the called empathy map: a representation of personas with feelings, actions, pains (or needs) and wins (or desires).

Empathy map canvas. Source: Event Model Generation.

There are many versions of this map, and the one showed here was created by Event Model Generation.

The level of detail when mapping personas can also vary between organizations. A complete example can be found at the website Keep It Usable:

Persona map example. Fonte: Keep It Usable.

The idea is that this level of detail when mapping traits will allow the organization to easily and deeply relate with personas. It is like a well developed character in movies and games. Throughout the history, we get attached to certain characters (and maybe hating others). It is an emotion connection. Personas are meant to create the same sort of feelings, as this enables the organization to better do what they do.

Mapping personas is a continuous work

Creating personas is a task that requires people to know other people and understand their world view. The effort is compensated when a real persona definition is uncovered, as it guides organizational decisions. This definition of persona is not done once, though. Organizations should always keep their personas updated, meaning that people should occasionally get out of the office and talk with people. It is something healthy for organizations to do and there is immediate return for organizations in form of knowledge.