Persona is a powerful tool for understanding and prioritizing the needs of different types of users. Based on the description of users of a product, the technique provides information about the characteristics of a group of them. It considers different parameters such as their goals, skills, abilities, experience with technology or context. They are created by conducting interviews and research, and they represent an archetype of an imaginary but realistic user, highlighting their behaviours, attitudes, and goals.
Persona or personas technique is also known as profile or user profile.
What is this technique/tool about
This technique is based on the interviewing of different potential customers to better understand their needs, so that it is easier to supply them with the services and/or functionalities they need.
For which purposes is it used (why in your high school teaching)
It is useful to identify the customer needs, to acquire new information about him/her and to design a campaign,
Limitations
They may force the combination of several different groups into one.
Errors can be made by generalizations.
Preparation before the session:
To create personas, one must have gone through other methods such as What, How, why? interviews, saturation and grouping, empathy mapping, and journey mapping.
During the session:
After identifying a range of common elements, a list of characteristics is made for each range of themes. Transfer all this information to a persona format and write its representative name depending on the user's profile. Finally, name your persona by applying common names for larger target groups and less common names for smaller user groups.
Follow-up the session:
When finished using this tool, one should understand the user and identify a place or characteristics that can be intervened.
This method could be useful with “Business and Entrepreneurship” students. When they must create a company, they might interview a sample of their city´s population to find out what their needs are, so that they can create a more appropriate company for the citizens in their town.
To carry out this technique, we will need to interview several people. We can do it both, face to face and by online video calls.
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