Personas help focus your organisation on real users and what they need.
Why use personas?
Personas make users feel real. They’re based on research and represent key user types with shared goals and behaviours. They help everyone in your organisation understand who users are, what they want, and how to meet their needs.
Personas guide design, content and functionality decisions. They help you focus on what matters and avoid creating features or content that users don’t need.
They also encourage empathy. It’s hard for a 25-year-old developer to design for a 49-year-old mother juggling work and family. Personas help bridge that gap.
Personas vs market segments
Market segments focus on numbers: age, gender, location. Personas explore what people do and why. They reveal motivations, pain points and behaviours.
Segmentation might give you dozens of user types. Personas focus on a small number of meaningful groups based on goals. Designing for just a few core personas helps you meet the needs of many.
What makes personas work?
- Clear and memorable. A small set of distinct personas makes them easy to use.
- Evidence-based. Good personas come from real research, not internal guesswork.
- Co-created. Involving your team builds buy-in and makes personas more useful.
“Design for somebody who doesn’t exist and you’ll have no customers.”
– Nielsen Norman Group
Our process
- We listen to your team: We start by talking to digital leads, content owners and frontline staff to understand who your users are and what goals matter most.
- We research your users: We carry out research with real users through interviews, surveys, diary studies, or fieldwork. We learn what they need, how they search for it, what frustrates them, and how they interact digitally.
- We build the personas: We analyse the data to identify user types and common goals.
- We refine them with you: We test draft personas in a workshop with your team, refining them together. Final personas belong to you, not us. They’re tools your organisation can use to plan journeys, generate content and build truly user-focused services.
As part of a persona development project we aim to produce you 3-4 robust and detailed archetypes, each including:
- A name and photo (e.g. Careers Adviser Cathy)
- A quote reflecting their main goal
- Personal details (age, family, location)
- Experience level and motivations
- Goals, frustrations and barriers
- Devices used and other contact points
Ready to bring your users to life?
Book a discovery call and let us help you get to know your customers even better.