Module 1: Product
I decided that for the first assignment of MSPM there was only one topic worthy of such an important milestone: users. More specifically, I found a few articles & a podcast on user personas and summarized them below, then I did an exercise building out user personas for one of my favorite apps, Rocket Money. Throughout the summaries, I included relevant questions I tried to ask myself to squeeze out some critical thoughts; those are in bold.
For this assignment, I gave myself a grade of 85/100.
The first question I had about user personas was where exactly they are used in the ecosystem of an average company. Are there different variations of personas used for different purposes across an organization?
Turns out, yes, often there are multiple types of personas, including but not limited to analytics personas, product personas, and marketing personas (also known as market segments) (Winters). Winters explains that analytics personas are existing users grouped by their usage patterns, while product personas are generally existing users grouped by a combination of quantitative and qualitative characteristics. On the other hand, marketing personas are generally future users, and they outline the target market that the team wants to go after.
Winters argues that you can sometimes question whether you even need personas if your marketing plan is really simple (for example, only using Google SEO – which is to be covered in a later assignment). Do you agree that certain situations negate the need for personas? While his argument is specifically regarding marketing personas, product personas are often pretty elemental to defining how users use a product and thus determining which features to add. Even if your users could be grouped into a single product persona (the rough equivalent of his anti-marketing persona scenario), I can’t imagine a situation where you wouldn’t benefit from outlining the relevant personas. You might not need marketing personas, but you definitely need some type of product personas.
Winters also proposes that you should sometimes question whether you should be utilizing traditional marketing personas and segmented messaging strategies at all or whether you should move to employing 1:1 personalized marketing tools. What are instances when 1:1 personalized marketing tools might not be a good investment? If you truly don’t have information that is personalized to individual users, or if you’re not allowed to use it, then of course it wouldn’t make sense to invest in 1:1 marketing. If the personalized information that you have about individuals can’t really be leveraged in any valuable way, then you also probably don’t need to invest in 1:1 marketing.
Next, I found two articles that helped clarify how to craft a user persona. The first article, Rapid Personas, outlines that a quick way to start brainstorming user personas is to match a role with a need and a challenge (Brown). Can you think of an example of a role, need, and challenge? As a building manager I need a way to secure my tenants’ packages so that random people don’t enter the building and steal them. The second article, from Career Foundry, outlines the critical elements of a full user persona: a header; a demographic profile, including personal background, professional background, user environment, psychographics; the user’s end goal(s); and the scenario. Multiple of the three aforementioned articles noted that empathy research should come first and user personas should be an artifact that emerges from a deep understanding of the user. The Career Foundry article also adds that user personas don’t need to include any specific level of detail, but they should only include details that actually serve a purpose for the design.
The last resource I pulled in for this assignment was a podcast from How To Succeed in Product Management on user personas that included commentary from various industry leaders. The first main point they discussed was how to balance being specific enough in user personas that they are actionable without being so specific that they are exclusive of important edge cases and user traits that have historically been marginalized. They acknowledged that this is a difficult balance to strike, but one of them suggested that you start by including every user, then pare it down to be more specific. Another key piece of advice was that you shouldn’t be afraid to change the user personas for different design iterations to allow for better coverage. Can you think of any other strategies for making user personas specific without being overly exclusive? If you have 5 or 6 user personas, you could have one persona that specifically captures a variety of edge cases all in one.
In line with the first article I read, the podcast also discussed how to distinguish between market segments and personas. They explained that the two could have a 1:1 relationship, but generally market segments are broader and identified earlier while user personas are more specific and identified later on. Can you give an example of a market segment with a user persona that fits into it? Product: fresh, prepackaged, ready-to make dinners; Market segment: Dual-income parents with young children living in suburban neighborhoods with interests in health, cooking, and family; User Persona: 32-year old couple of toddlers living in suburban Texas who are tired of relying on fast food and frozen meals for dinner but don’t have time to meal plan and grocery shop for the entire family.
The last key point I took away from the podcast was the importance of making user personas into more than just a list of traits. Instead, they emphasized that user personas need to be made as human as possible so product/design/etc. can develop empathy towards them and use it to influence their decisions. Strategies they suggested were giving the user persona a name and creating a physical representation of them (in the podcast, making them into a cardboard cutout). Can you think of any other ways to make user personas more “human?” I heard once that lies are more believable when they have really specific details; I think this could be very pertinent here. Include a few randomly specific or unique details in the persona that make them more memorable, making sure not to include an excessive number of details.
Exercise: User Personas for Rocket Money
| Juliet 23 years old, just graduated college and has moved into a group home in San Francisco to start her first job Likes shopping, cooking, traveling Generally organized | Her primary goal is to gain insights into how she spends money so that she can make smart financial decisions She’s hoping to be able to pay for all of her living expenses and her monthly loan payments without going into credit card debt, but she has no idea if that’s realistic She has played around with a few budgeting apps before, but she found them cumbersome and more trouble than they were worth |
| She hasn’t historically budgeted much, mainly relying on calculations in her head or the occasional excel spreadsheet to estimate how much she can afford to spend She has held part-time jobs throughout college, but this will be the first time that she has a steady income that can cover all of her living expenses | Juliet is not actively looking for a budgeting website or app, but she knows in the back of her head that it would probably be beneficial for her to leverage some better financial tools in order to meet her financial goals. |
However, in one of the above resources I remember hearing a dig at designers for biasing user personas towards their own personal experience rather than centering them around the general user population. “Juliet” was largely modeled after myself and people like me, so I wanted to try a different user persona more different than me:
| Harold 50 years old Father of 2 children, owns a condo and works full-time | Harold’s primary goal is to reduce the amount of time he spends on budgeting while maintaining his level of control and visibility into his family’s financial position. Harold is also very interested in making the most of his money so that he can save for his kids’ college and his own retirement |
| Harold has historically been in charge of finances and budgeting for the entire family. He uses an Excel spreadsheet to manually keep track of all finances. This method works fine, but it is very time consuming. Harold is highly organized but a little out of touch with newer technology. He sometimes gets frustrated with websites and apps that aren’t intuitive to use. | Harold is actively considering websites and mobile apps that can take over some of his budgeting responsibilities. Ideally he would like to not pay for this service, but he is willing to pay a little for a very high quality experience. |
I noticed with Harold I also based the persona mostly around people I know (my father and other parents I know). If anything, I suppose this is a testament to how important it is to do user interviews and build empathy with users prior to creating user personas. At least if you’re going to bias user personas towards people you know when building them, you might end up biasing them towards actual users you’ve talked to instead of just yourself or other people you know.
Thanks for reading.
Works Cited
Brown, Dan. “Rapid Personas.” UX Collective. 5 July 2022. Web. https://uxdesign.cc/rapid-personas-a-play-for-your-ux-playbook-44b73c807081.
Shulman, Jeff, Russak, Red, and Benghanem, Soumeya. “75: User Personas.” How to Succeed In Product Management. Spotify.
Winters, Casey. “The Three Personas: How Marketing, Product, and Analytics Attempt to Define The Customer.” Casey Accidental. 19. https://caseyaccidental.com/different-persona-types?utm_source=productmanagerhq.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pmhqnewsletter040318.
Veal, Raven. “How to Define a User Persona.” Career Foundry. 11 May 2023. Web. https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/how-to-define-a-user-persona/.
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