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There are 4 guides, each with 1-3 steps. Together they form a full guide to creating personas and user need statements.
Guide 1 covers planning. Guides 2-4 cover delivery and can be worked through in a week. They work best that way.
Each guide can also be used independently of the others if required.
Familiarise yourself with each guide’s steps in advance. It’s OK if you don’t fully understand them. Real understanding only comes from doing the work.
It’s possible to run your first user interview on a Monday and produce personas and user need statements on a Friday. You might spend around 25 hours of the week on this work. Your colleagues might spend around 10 hours helping you.
Aim to build momentum once you start interviewing your users (Guide 2). You will find it easier and produce better outputs if you build up speed. Taking too long between guides and their steps will make you lose focus and limit the insights that emerge from the process.
You will need to repeat the steps in guides 2-4 for each user group you decide to create personas and user need statements for. For example you may wish to create for both service users and their carers/family. You decide who. Once you’ve started, focus on one user group at a time
Effort needed: 3-7 hours, depending on your experience and how much thinking you have already done.
Start planning at least two weeks in advance of when you want to run your first interview. Take your time.
Start recruiting users for interviews as soon as you know which user group you want to interview first.
Effort needed: 12-16 hours + up to 5 hours of colleague collaboration time
Carry these out over 2-3 days if you can e.g. Monday to Wednesday
Effort needed: 3 hours + 2 x 3 hours of colleague collaboration time
Synthesise your interview notes to find themes and insights the day after your final interview e.g. Thursday
Effort needed: 4-8 hours
Create personas and user need statements the day after synthesis e.g. Friday
Each guide contains highlighted links to internal (👬) and external (🔗🔗) resources. These will help you complete the activities in this guide.
👬 All internal Catalyst resources, templates and content are free to copy and reuse.
🔗🔗 External content and resources may be copyrighted.
Non-highlighted links also appear in the text. These may be useful to you.
There are a wide variety of practices, methods and tools being used to create goal-based personas, user need statements’ and other design tools. We believe that:
Any process that gets you inquiring into your users’ needs and behaviours in a rigorous way is good.
Any process that encourages collaboration with colleagues or others is good.
The process described here is a good way to do this if it’s your first or second time, but it's not the only way.
Some external links include other methods you may explore.
Personas and user need statements are a snapshot of your users and their needs now. They will change over time. So treat them as a means to an end. Avoid perfection. Instead aim for good enough.
They fit well with agile working practices. You can iterate or develop more user need statements as you learn more later. Or you might add a persona for a new user type that emerges.
But it is good practice to present your user need statements well. They will be influencing your work, provoking empathy and communicating insights to others. So it's important that they are accessible and memorable. Use the template to create well presented user need statements.
Think about your plan. Write your plan. Draft your research questions.
Do this work because you need to plan:
Which user groups you will be interviewing
What you will be trying to find out about them
How you will do the interviews
When you will synthesise what you learn
When you will turn your synthesis into personas and user need statements
You can do this solo, but it’s good to get feedback.
You will need a writing tool like Google Docs or MS Word. We recommend Google Docs because of its versatility, accessibility and how it supports collaboration. We've made the project plan template in Google Docs. 👇
It will help you think about what needs to go in your brief.
Copy the template. Click ‘File’ to do this.
Fill in the bracketed text [it looks like this].
Adjust the template if you need to. It needs to suit your project.
Decide which user group you will interview first.
Do this in the research questions section of the template.
Give extra thought to your research questions. These are high level questions that summarise what you want to find out. They use a similar format to other research projects.
Working out your research questions can be tricky at first. If you’ve got more than 4 questions then you might need to combine some. Remove extra detail. You can include more detail in your interview questions later.
How do our users feel and behave when they receive a request to apply for universal credit?
What do people need in order to feel comfortable accessing our services online?
What problems do our volunteers experience when they are trying to volunteer for our organisation?
How do our users go about coping or solving the problem when we are not there?
What are our users' online habits, behaviours and technology?
Do this once you have decided on the first user group. Use Guide 2: How to do user interviews to do this. You do not need to have completed your plan.
Ask a colleague to read your plan and share their thoughts. They should let you know about anything they don’t understand. You can ask them for their ideas too.
👬 Use slide 2 of this to help you.
Move forward to .
A series of 4 step-by-step guides to creating Personas and User Need Statements (aka: PUNS 😉). For people working in charities and other organisations.
Personas and user need statements are design tools that can help you think about your users more deeply. They are useful when developing digital services.
The Catalyst PUNS Guide will help you create beautiful and well-presented personas and user need statements. They will take you through the process step-by-step and give you templates and examples to make it easier if it's your first time. By the end you will have a set of personas and user need statements that:
are easy for others to understand, discuss and learn from.
help you design digital services that work better.
You can also use each guide on its own.
These guides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means you may freely download and reuse or remix their contents. You do not need to ask for permission.
Version 1.2
The Catalyst PUNS Guide has been tested with:
Ellie Hale of CAST on May 3rd 2021 as a google doc. Afterwards it received several revisions.
The Guide is currently at the 'alpha' stage. That means we are testing it out and expect to iterate it further. Please feed back on your experience; let us know if you think anything is missing or needs updating. Email hello@wethecatalysts.org.uk
Created by Joe Roberson and Chris Thorpe for Catalyst.
With thanks to Ellie Hale.
Catalyst is a network of people and organisations helping UK charities grow in digital skills and confidence. We’re here to connect you to the best free resources and support to make digital easier for you and your team. Find out more.
Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund's Covid-19 Digital Response fund.
Switch out of normal work mode and become a curious researcher.
Let go of what you think you know about your users. Inquire more deeply than usual into their experience of being them.
Use the linked resources to help you with each step.
A video calling tool like Zoom or MS Teams
Note taking tool like MS Word or Google Docs
You can do all of this solo but it helps to have someone to discuss interview questions with and someone to take notes during the interviews.
This reduces drop-out rates and helps people feel comfortable and more relaxed when they join the interview.
It also gives people an easier chance to say if they need to rearrange or cancel their interview.
Do this 24-48 hours in advance of their interview. Or do it at the start of the week. Friday is not a good day to do this.
"Running a good interview is less about following specific rules than it is about being a certain kind of person for the duration of the interview. The apprentice model is a good starting point for how to behave." - Contextual Design, Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt
Turn on your curious brain. Get ready to act like your participant is the master and you are the apprentice.
Smile 🙂 because it helps people relax.
Follow the script. Tell the participant you want to learn from them.
Ask your questions. Take your time. Allow them time to think about each question. Don’t be afraid of short silences.
Listen earnestly.
Make them feel heard. Engage, make frequent eye contact, nod, acknowledge their answers.
Move them on to the next question if they become repetitive or get side-tracked.
Prioritise the questions you marked as important if you run short on time. It’s ok if you don’t manage to ask all your less important questions.
Ask yourself what went well and what could have been better.
Remove or merge repetitive questions.
Tweak the question order if their flow didn’t work. Do this only a little.
Tweak the script where it needs it.
Repeat step 2.
Repeat step 3 if you need to review again.
Let your participants know that you appreciate their time and effort in helping you.
Synthesise what you heard. Write insight statements.
This guide is part of The Catalyst PUNS Guide. It follows on from Guide 2: How to do user interviews. It has two parts that together make up one working session. Do both parts in one session.
The session might take you around 3 hours. Morning is the best time to do this work.
Personas and user need statements are tools for taking a design-led approach to charity services. They exist to help you and those you work with keep your users and their needs front and central during the design process. They will provoke you to think more critically about your users.
Personas are fictional characters created to represent a user type - an archetype. Although they are fictional, and to a degree subjective, they are grounded in research. Specifically the research patterns that emerge from user interviews with real people - your users.
Personas include a precise description of a user and what they want to do. This description helps everyone involved in a project understand your users’ motivations, behaviour and characteristics.
Using personas in your design process helps you and your digital partners:
build and maintain empathy for your users when they can’t be in the room with you
say ‘yes’ to decisions about what to design and how it should work
say ‘no’ to decisions
meet the needs of the broader group of people represented by that persona.
Personas are like holiday photos, if you’ve been there they are a reminder what happened. They can help your digital partner get working more quickly, saving you time and money.
👬 👀 Look at an annotated example of a persona.
👬 👀 Look at a set of personas and user need statements together.
🔗🔗A closer look at personas by Smashing Magazine
User need statements are short succinct statements that describe your users’ specific needs. Like personas they are grounded in user interviews with real people. Some people call them ‘user stories’.
They are always written from your users’ point of view, and usually follow the same 3-part format:
As a… [user type e.g. ‘person seeking mental health support’]
I need/want/expect to… [need]
So that… [goal or reason it's important to that person]
User need statements don’t try to describe how a problem should be solved. Instead they try to present the problem in a clear, empathy-driven way.
User need statements help you and everyone in a project understand that problem more deeply first. They do not try to describe how a problem should be solved. For this reason they are written mainly using verbs rather than nouns.
Using user need statements in your design process helps you:
Condense research insights into your users’ specific needs in different situations
Align everyone involved along your users’ needs and goals
Begin identifying how you will measure the success of any solutions you create - you can ask ‘how will we know if we have accomplished this goal’?
👬 👀 Look at annotated examples of three user need statements.
👬 👀 Look at a set of personas and user need statements together.
🔗🔗 User need statements by Nielsen Norman Group.
Use them to help you design your digital service or solution. Use them to:
Communicate research findings
Remind you of your users’ expectations, difficulties, behaviors and goals
Gain a perspective similar to the user’s
Help you decide which needs to focus on first
Guide your ideas when you run an ideation session
Review ideas and features e.g. ‘what would [persona name] make of this idea?’
Build empathy and provide direction when making any design decision
You could pay a designer, user researcher or digital agency to do this work for you. Or even with you. But it’s good to do it yourself, from within your organisation. This is because:
Anyone can learn the methods and processes needed to create personas and user need statements.
You absorb the knowledge and insight from the process more deeply than if you only see the outputs
The methods and processes you learn will help your other work. The skills involved in making personas and user need statements will help you design any service, not only a digital one.
Start early. Recruit 6-7 so you can interview 5.
Start recruiting participants from your first user group as soon as you have decided who that first group is. Guide 1’s planning template helps you decide.
Your plan does not need to be completed for you to start recruiting. Starting early gives you more time to do this.
You will need these tools to do the work:
Form creation tool e.g. Google Forms
Social media
You can do some of this work on your own, but you will probably need help to find participants.
Decide on a 2-3 day period when you will carry out interviews. Make it at least two weeks in the future. This will give you time to manage any recruitment delays.
You should aim to carry out 5 interviews. This is enough people.
Sometimes people drop out or are unsuitable. So recruit 6-7 people. It's ok if you end up interviewing them all.
Write down a description of the people you want to recruit. Be clear on any categories they need to fit into. This will help you find the right people to interview.
Click ‘file to make a copy. Use it for parts 2.2 and 2.3 too.
This will make it easier for people to agree to an interview, whichever way they hear about them. You need to ask them for their name and contact details, and to confirm they consent.
There are two ways to do this.
Use Google Forms, Typeform or a similar tool. When you receive their form submission, arrange an interview time with them.
Use a free Calendly account. This will allow participants to send their details to you and simultaneously choose when to be interviewed.
Do this so that it’s easy for people to decide if they want to take part.
Here’s an example:
“We’re looking for [describe the specific type of people you want to talk to] to speak to about their experience of [service, issue, challenge, problem]. Calls will last 45 minutes and be confidential. [Details of any reward offered]. Sign up. Find out more.”
Add a link to your recruitment form to the text ‘Sign up’.
Add your email address, or a link to a document or webpage with more information, to the text ‘Find out more’.
Decide if you will be offering a reward or payment. Add this if you are.
Make it into a social media card for extra impact.
Do this as if you were promoting an event.
Email the request to people who might be suitable for interviewing.
Email it to colleagues to pass on to people who might be suitable.
Post it on your organisation’s social media.
Email it to people in other services who might be able to help recruit.
Do all of these at the same time. Don’t wait to see if one works before trying the other. If you get more people than you need then add them to a reserve list and politely contact them explaining that you would like to keep their details for future similar opportunities.
Email or call those who have booked. This gives them a chance to ask questions and feel comfortable. It will also reduce your drop-out rate.
Recruit interview participants. Run user interviews. Document interview notes.
This guide is part of The Catalyst PUNS Guide. It follows on from Guide 1: How to plan your project.
Use it and Guides 3 and 4 for each user group you plan to create personas and user need statements for.
By the time you are done here you will have:
A set of post-it notes capturing the most important things you heard in each interview, organised on a wall or whiteboard. These could be real or virtual.
Learnt how to recruit participants, run user interviews and document your notes as post-its on a whiteboard
Create questions that will help your users tell you what you want to know.
Note taking tool like Google Docs
You can do all of this solo but it helps to get feedback on your questions before using them.
Write down the questions you want to ask your participants. Think about how you might ask them in a way that they will understand. Use natural language. Make your questions open.
Plan a simple question first to help you and them warm up to the interview. The rest of your questions should help you answer your research questions.
Add sub-questions or prompts for each question. These will help participants to give you useful information.
Group questions by theme, in a logical order. Ask a more general question before a specific one.
Mark the most important questions you need to ask. That way you know which ones to prioritise if you run short of time.
Write down everything you need to let a participant know at the start and at the end of the interview. Use this checklist:
Who else is here, if you have someone taking notes
Why you are doing these interviews
How long the interview will last
That questions are optional and they can skip any they want
That they can switch off their camera if they want
That you will be making notes and what you will do with them
The script should include asking them if they are ok with that.
If you aren’t sure whether to include something in your script then add it in. It will help you remember to say it. You can always skip it if it isn’t needed.
Your script should end by thanking them for their time and asking them if they have any questions or anything else they’d like to add.
Turn your interview notes into an organised set of post-its for each participant.
Do this after each interview, while your experiences and perceptions are still fresh.
By the time you have finished documenting your notes in the ways described here you will be ready for Guide 3: Finding themes and insights in what you’ve heard.
A whiteboard and post-its. This could be online using a tool like Miro or Mural. Use the Miro template in Step 1.
You can do this on your own. It’s best if the same person analyses each interview.
You will use it to document your notes in a way that prepares you for Guide 3. Synthesis is a way of analysing and finding patterns in data. Insight statements are ways of writing what you’ve noticed in the data.
Use your word processing programme’s spellchecker. This will tidy up your notes before you analyse them.
You will be looking for three types of information:
Examples:
“Google is my best friend”
“It’s more a mindset than a competency thing. I never really know what digital means.”
“I'm very confident and capable of using digital tools.”
Examples:
Thinks critically about digital. Not a techy. Doesn't know how to build, but does know how to ask good questions.
Usually looks for a blog on a digital topic.
Digital skills and confidence is an issue
These are the most difficult to distinguish. You might only spot one or two per interview.
Examples:
Seems to fear not being ready to offer digital support and advice to other charities.
Positive attitude towards digital - seems to have carried them far
🔗🔗 Read ‘Documenting interviews’ in The most neglected part of the design process.
Look for information directly related to your research questions. Not everything will be. Leave out everything that isn’t relevant. This will help you focus on the most important information later.
Find your first piece of text. It could be a paragraph or a couple of sentences. Decide if it contains important information. If it doesn’t then move on.
If it does, then depending on what it is:
Copy direct quotes to a post-it.
Summarise observations on a post-it.
Carefully summarise any interpretations on a post-it
Use different coloured post-its for each type of information. This is what it looks like:
Use only one post-it per quote, summary or interpretation. Split sentences if you need to. This will help you later on.
🧙♂️ Tip: Add each observation or quote you copy as a comment to the note text you took it from. Like the image below 👇. This creates a record of what you have done with the notes, which can be helpful if you want to check back later.
You don’t need to do this for interpretations.
Do this after each interview, while your experiences and perceptions are still fresh.
This is an optional step. Doing it will improve the quality of your documentation but is not necessary for it to be good enough.
Ask a colleague to read through your notes and write down their observations and interpretations on post-its.
Integrate their post-its with yours. Remove any duplicates.
You have two choices:
Move forward to Guide 3: How to find themes and insights from user interviews, or
Stop here and analyse what you’ve heard using an alternative method.
Cluster your post-its by theme. Find themes, patterns and common traits.
This step is a collaborative activity that will take up most of a 2.5 hour workshop session with colleagues. Use the rest of the session to write insight statements (see 3.2 Write insight statements)
The online whiteboard you created in step 4.
Do this with two colleagues. Do it with one if you can’t.
Don’t do this solo.
Explain to your colleagues that you need their help to sort and organise the things your users have told you. Tell them it will involve using post-it notes on a whiteboard and then writing down insights together. Tell them it will take around 2.5 hours, including a break.
It will give you an idea of what a synthesis session output looks like.
Look at your interview questions. Identify any high-level themes they explore. Examples could include:
Feelings about [situation]
About them
Family
Behaviour when stressed
Online habits
Accessing mental health information
Coping strategies
How they like to learn
Use short labels of 1-3 words for each theme. You can change these later.
Add these themes to the ‘Affinity clusters’ section on your whiteboard.
Gather your team around the post-its on your whiteboard.
Working together and individually, group the post-its by theme. It’s good to discuss what they mean and where they should go.
Add new themes when you need to. Group things that make sense together.
Discard post-its that aren’t relevant. Pruning is important.
Split post-its that hold two pieces of information.
Duplicate post-its if you need to because they fit into two places.
Discuss anything you aren’t sure of. Discard anything that doesn’t easily fit a theme. This will help you focus on what is important.
Do this if you have large amounts of notes in one theme.
Gather again around your whiteboard.
Working individually or together, sort each cluster of post-its into sub-themes. Do this in lines to make it easier.
Add short labels to describe each sub-theme.
Look at where your sub-themes only have one or two post-its. Discard these post-its or sort them into other themes if they fit naturally.
Create user need statements. Create personas.
This guide is part of The Catalyst PUNS Guide. It follows on from Guide 3: How to find themes and insights from user interviews.
For this guide to be useful you need to have already:
Carried out some user interviews
Synthesised the interview data
Clustered themes and insights together
You can do this by using Guide 3: How to find themes and insights from user interviews, or by other means you choose. Guide 3 includes links to some.
Turn your themes and sub-themes into rich insights that articulate the most valuable learning from your research.
This is a short but important activity. Do it as part of your synthesis session.
The online whiteboard you used in step 5.
Do this with the same colleagues. Work as a group or individually.
Look at the insight statement examples on your whiteboard. Read each one slowly. Try and see how they communicate a mixture of context, motivations, tension and impact.
Choose a theme. Notice its sub-themes. Read all its post-its.
Turn what you’ve read into a short statement that captures the strongest insight from a sub-theme. Write this statement from the user’s perspective.
Each statement should explain:
the context
the problem or dilemma
why it is happening.
The best ones also include users’ feelings or motivations and express a tension in the situation.
Repeat this for every sub-theme. You can combine sub-themes if they fit well together.
Ignore a sub-theme if it lacks a strong insight or relevance to your research questions. It's better to leave it out than try and create an insight that isn’t there.
Work through this checklist for each of your insights to see where you can strengthen and refine.
Well-informed. Is it informed by multiple users’ perspectives or experience?
More than an observation. Does it offer insight into how or why a phenomenon is occurring? Does it offer a compelling reframe of something we already know?
So what? Does it help people understand why it matters? Does it capture a tension or a shift that needs to happen? Does it connect to research questions and project impact objectives?
Sticky. Is it memorable, interesting, and repeatable? Can you link to a metaphor?
🔗🔗 (video)
Move forward to or
Stop here and use your themes and insights to create . Do this while the insights are still fresh.
You're ready to rock 'n' roll.
Use them to:
Communicate research findings
Remind you of your users’ expectations, difficulties, behaviours and goals when exploring solutions
Help you decide which needs to focus on first
Guide your ideas when you run an ideation session
Review ideas and features e.g. ‘what would [persona name] make of this idea?’
Build empathy and provide direction when making any future design decision
Your users’ needs will change. This might happen in a few months or longer.
Their expectations will also change. Slowly or quickly.
Your project will change. You might decide to focus on a particular user type within your wider user group.
That’s ok.
Look at your user need statements first. Look at what seems to have changed. Decide what steps, if any, you need to go through to update them. Don’t change them without evidence.
Update your personas in a similar way. Create a new one if you need to.
Turn your insight statements into user need statements.
This step will take you around 2 hours.
🧙♂️ Tip: Do this step within 24 hours of creating insight statements.
That way the insights will still be fresh.
🧙♂️ Tip: Use the annotated examples of three user need statements to help you.
Have it available to look at as you write your statements.
The whiteboard you used in Guide 3.
A note taking tool like Google Docs or MS Word.
A presentation tool like Google Sheets or MS Powerpoint.
You can do this on your own or with anyone you created insight statements with.
👬 Read the introduction to user need statements again.
🔗🔗 Watch User need statements in Design Thinking.
Use your note taking tool or this template to jot your statements down.
Read the first insight statement. Ask yourself ‘what need does this reveal’?
Write each user need in the 3-part statement format:
As a… [user type e.g. ‘person seeking mental health support’]
I need/want/expect to… [need]
So that… [goal or insight into why it's important to that person]
Good
As a person experiencing mental distress I need information on my support options to be easy to read and feel supportive, so that I don't get frustrated, overwhelmed or have to struggle to understand my support options. (Good because the need clearly belongs to the user and statement articulates their hopes and fears.)
As an educator I need to access high quality LGBT+ curriculum resources so that I feel confident I am teaching my pupils well. (Good because it articulates the user's need and their motivations in a way that is easy to understand.)
Bad
As a young person looking for help and support with my mental health I need an online, hosted chat room to help me feel better. (Bad because the need is phrased as a solution. Perhaps what they need is to be able to connect with other young people in a similar situation so they feel less alone.)
As a provider of LGBT+ support services I need our services to be delivered at a time and place that suits our users so that they don't have a bad experience of our service. (Bad because it confuses who has the need and the insight lacks empathy for the user.)
Keep asking yourself:
What does the user care about?
Why is this important to the user?
What emotion is driving the user’s behaviour?
What does the user stand to gain?
Review your statements. Be willing to iterate it and alter the language. Check that you are:
Thinking about users’ needs as verbs, not nouns
Talking about needs and not ways to meet those needs
Capturing nuances, and being specific where you can
Look at your statements. See if there are 2-3 high level themes that they fit into. Write down those themes.
You can do this after step 5 if you prefer.
👬 Copy the template deck if you haven't already.
Add your statements to your deck, one per slide.
Give each statement a short title. This makes them memorable.
Add a theme to the title if you haven’t yet done so. Check your themes if you have.
Organise your statements by theme and from general to specific, or in any order that makes sense to you.
Number your statements. This makes them easier to find and remember.
This is an optional step. Your user need statements will be good enough even if you don’t do this.
Acceptance criteria are a list of outcomes that you use as a checklist to confirm that your service has done its job and is meeting that user need.
They’re often written as a list that begins with ‘it’s done when the user…’
This is an optional step. Your user need statements should be good enough even if you don’t do this.
Show your statements to a user, one at a time. Ask them how each statement feels. Not every user will agree with each statement. That's ok.
Afterwards show them all the statements together and ask them to rank them for importance.
Record what they say and do.
Repeat this with 3-4 more users.
Edit, remove, re-sort your user need statements based on what you learnt.
Turn your themes and insight statements into user personas by filling in each section in the template.
This step will take you 2-3 hours if you are creating two persona.
🧙♂️ Tip: Do this step within 24 hours of creating insight statements.
That way the insights will still be fresh.
🧙♂️ Tip: Use the annotated example of a persona to help you.
Have it available to look at as you build your personas.
The whiteboard you used in Guide 3.
The deck you added your user need statements to in 4.1.
You can do this on your own or with anyone you created insight statements with.
👬 Read the introduction to personas again
👬 Look at the full set of two contrasting personas to imagine what yours might look like at the end.
Look at the patterns that have emerged from your research. See if there are strong contrasting needs and user types in your user group.
Create one persona if everyone has broadly similar needs and behaviours. It's ok if some of those needs contrast with each other.
Create a second, contrasting, persona if your research shows big differences in needs and behaviours within your user group. Decide which persona will be the primary persona, reflecting the most common needs and behaviours.
Create up to three personas if you need to. More than three personas can be unhelpful as they will blur together.
Give each persona a tagline or label. Add these to your deck.
Don’t worry if you feel like you are missing some of your users or their needs.
Add basic details that help us imagine them as a person and understand their situation in life.
This could include name, role and past experiences. Be specific. Keep it simple.
Do this now because it makes the persona more real. This will help you create it.
Use natural photos of real people in everyday life if you can. Use head and shoulder photos.
Find free to use photos using Flickr’s creative commons search parameters. Scroll photos or use the search function. GDSteam’s Flickr can be useful.
Crop the photo then add it to your slides.
Look at the quotes on your whiteboard. Look at the words people use to describe themselves and what they do in life. Combine what they say into one descriptive quote that shows how they see themselves.
Look at your themes, sub-themes, insight statements and user need statements. Search them for your users’ goals.
Write down three high level goals that summarise what your persona is trying to achieve in their work.
Look at your themes, sub-themes and insight statements. Search them for behaviours, fears, motivations, quirks, frustrations and habits.
Write down 5-7 behaviours. Try to start each one with a verb or adjective. Write simply. Try to use only 1-2 sentences per behaviour.
Look at your user need statements. Search for what your users want to be doing, feeling or knowing.
Write down 5-7 primary wants and needs. Start each sentence with ‘Wants’ or Needs’. Include why they want or need what they do.
Look at your direct quote post-its in your sub-themes. Look for those that illustrate a goal, behaviour, want or need.
Pick the most vivid and specific ones. Copy these. Edit each one for brevity and readability. Quotes should be snappy and memorable.
This is an optional step. Your persona will be good enough even if you don’t do this.
Show your personas to people working with the same user group. They could be in your organisation or others.
Ask them what they recognise in your persona. Ask them if they know other user types, or how they might iterate the persona or create another to sit alongside it.
Decide if you want to iterate your persona, create another or do nothing for now.
Like with user need statements, creating personas is not a science. Your personas should be rooted in the evidence but it's up to you how you use that evidence.
Your personas don’t need to represent every variation or type of user in your user group. They can’t do that. But they can represent some. That’s enough to design with.
