Persona Building

6-min. read

A persona is a one- or two-page graphic that maps the emotional life of users or, more often, user groups. It is a tool for understanding stakeholders and the dynamics between and among them. Moreover, a persona is a tool for empathetic problem solving.

If we haven’t met before, I’m Allison, a writer and writing consultant based in the Thumb of Michigan. I have worked primarily on professional promotion projects, editing projects, and usability research projects.

I use personas because I do not write, design, or solve problems in a vacuum. When I design for other people, I start by taking inventory of their emotions, needs, pain points, and resources. This way, I make sure that my design either fits into the context of their existing situation or transforms the context in a positive manner.

Once I create my personas, it becomes much easier to think of the problem in a holistic way and go beyond the obvious.

In this post, I tell the story of a market research project I conducted on behalf of the Professional Writing program at Eastern Michigan University. Although the primary deliverable was a recruitment and retention plan, the personas my team created became the true artifact for our research. I walk you through stakeholder analysis and mapping, empathy mapping, and persona development. My last section, Final Thoughts, frames strategies for building personas that drive consensus and results.

Let’s get started.

One Problem in Context

The Task

In Spring 2020, I served as a recruitment and retention strategist for the Professional Writing program at Eastern Michigan University. I collaborated with seven other writers to develop a comprehensive plan that framed our proposed strategies for attracting and retaining more technical writing students. In addition to the strategic plan, we developed four strategy models intended to guide EMU faculty in establishing better practices for recruitment and retention.

Early on, my team practiced empathy for stakeholders through activities such as stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping, empathy mapping, and persona building.

Team Process and Dynamics

During team meetings, our team leader guided us to complete various usability research, design thinking, and game-storming methods. These methods included pre-mortem analysis, heuristic ideation, stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping, empathy mapping, persona building, and affinity mapping.

Each method served at least three functions in the context of our project.

• The practical function. By engaging in these activities, we studied the problem more holistically. The methods helped us define symptoms and causes; understand primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders; and propose creative, research-driven solutions.

• The team-building function. By writing everyone’s thoughts on sticky notes and seeing constellations emerge between and among team members’ ideas, we got everyone’s buy-in and investment. The methods also helped us establish a shared mental map, which made it easier to talk about less tangible facets of the problem.

• The communication function. By taking photographs of our sticky note arrangements to remember different thought processes and revisit an old configuration if needed, we used each method as an artifact. The methods provided us with material for the appendices of our final report, showing our client what and how we thought about the problem.

Key Activities

• proposing unconventional solutions through heuristic ideation

• engaging in a pre-mortem analysis to understand team members’ concerns

• analyzing primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders

• mapping stakeholders on a power-interest spectrum

• mapping stakeholder networks with the atomic model

• creating empathy maps based on the stakeholder maps

• constructing personas for faculty members, current students, prospective students, and members of the EMU admissions team

Stakeholder Mapping

How to Apply the Method

My team created stakeholder maps for multiple stakeholders in the recruitment equation. We represented our ideas with the atomic model, in which we listed the stakeholder’s abilities and knowledge in a cluster with offshoots to relevant connections.

Our Team’s Findings

One of the most influential maps to our overall recruitment strategy was the stakeholder map for prospective students, which showed a huge gap between the talents that new or soon-to-be high school graduates have and the knowledge they need to be successful in the college search process. No wonder many feel inadequate or unprepared to engage in the work that current recruitment processes ask them to do.

We also found that prospective students are connected with a wide range of stakeholders:

• fellow high school students,

• parents and family,

• high school teachers,

• college admissions,

• high school counselors,

• athletics / student organizations, and

• financial aid.

View fullsize

Stakeholder map for prospective students.

Key Benefit

The atomic model helped my team understand stakeholder groups not only as individuals but as complex networks with other groups. If a school wants to recruit students, reps have to sell the program not only to them but to the people students turn to for advice and/or approval. This could include parents and families, high school teachers, academic advisors, and classmates, depending on whom the student trusts and to what extent.

Empathy Mapping

How to Apply the Method

My group used the stakeholder maps to develop empathy maps, which tended to be more concrete and categorized.

We answered questions inspired by the five senses.

1. Who are we empathizing with?

2. What do they need to do?

3. What do they see?

4. What do they say?

5. What do they do?

6. What do they hear?

Our Team’s Findings

The process helped my team understand 1) that few incoming students have a good mental map of the tech writing profession, as there is currently no place for it at the high school level, and 2) that many applicants feel a high degree of stress about college and the future in general.

We found that prospective students have a variety of pain points with the recruitment process:

• pressure to choose the “right” school and major;

• disapproval of family, friends, teachers, or academic advisors;

• stress about affording college;

• potential rejection from first-choice schools;

• fears of academic failure; and

• fears of professional failure.

View fullsize

Empathy map for prospective students.

Key Benefit

By creating an empathy map, we asked ourselves how we could play to the strengths of new students and help them reconcile their weaknesses with the admissions process. Or, more broadly, how do we design a recruitment process that shows empathy to them?

Persona Development

How to Apply the Method

My team created personas for current and prospective students, faculty members, and admissions representatives. I was responsible within my group for the persona who belongs to EMU’s admissions team, a group we deemed significant in part because our contact had indicated that faculty members and admissions reps had worked at cross-purposes before.

My team designed a persona template with five categories:

1. Personal Profile;

2. Skills, Abilities, and Knowledge;

3. Obstacles, Challenges, and Fears;

4. Goals, Needs, Motivations, and Expectations; and

5. Connections.

Our Team’s Findings

We found multiple overlaps between the goals of faculty and the goals of admissions:

• for EMU’s enrollment to increase,

• for admissions to suggest study paths to prospective students,

• for faculty to facilitate the transition to EMU for incoming freshmen,

• for students to choose suitable academic programs, and

• for students to succeed.

View fullsize

Persona for admissions representative.

Key Benefit

Persona building helped us overcome the tendency to view recruitment as a zero-sum game and to figure out how to work with rather than against potentially opposing or apathetic stakeholders.

Final Thoughts

This final section is intended for researcher-designers who seek to leverage the persona as a tool for empathetic problem solving. Here, I list my best strategies for understanding stakeholders individually and collectively.

Read on for my best advice.

• Think of stakeholders as communities as ecosystems. By creating a stakeholder map, we found that although prospective students ultimately make their college decision, they are persuaded by a variety of secondary and tertiary stakeholders, whose needs we also needed to appeal to.

  Strategy: Draw a diagram that shows the relationships between and among your stakeholders. Use the atomic model or another such framework.

  Quick fix: Make a list of primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders.

• Identify pain points and define whether and how you can make them less painful. By creating an empathy map, we found that prospective students struggled—academically, intellectually, emotionally, and financially—to juggle a number of tasks required for the current college search process.

  Strategy: Create a detailed empathy map that focuses on a key stakeholder’s journey with your product/experience at the level of the five senses.

  Quick fix: Identify at least three resolvable pain points in the current customer experience.

• Look for the presence of or potential for symbiotic relationships. By creating personas, we identified strategic overlaps between the interests of faculty and admissions and ultimately proposed recruitment initiatives that satisfied both.

  Strategy: Design personas for significant stakeholders. Identify mutual pain points, compatible motivations, and any moments of overlap that surprise you.

  Quick fix: Construct a simple Venn diagram. Take note of personal and shared agendas.

Thanks for reading!

If you found this post helpful, check out my featured posts below.