Personas
Project Overview
Supplied the team with resources to enhance the efficiency of generating solutions for our users. Employed comprehensive personas for executive-level decision-making.
My Role
Organized and facilitated workshops
Consolidated information
Created final persona assets
The primary challenge of this project was establishing organizational trust in the personas. If the personas were not trusted they wouldn’t be used and the success of the project would be at risk.
Challenges
The initial step involved obtaining project approval, achieved through a comprehensive document outlining goals, scope, non-goals, risks, assumptions, dependencies, and the project timeline.
Upon approval, the decision was made to create 3-4 personas. Despite the absence of a dedicated research budget, the plan involved leveraging the extensive knowledge of the product team (PMs, Directors, Designers) to craft these personas. The intention was to later share these personas more broadly within the organization.
The success criteria were defined by the regular use of personas in collaborative documents and their incorporation into feature planning. Meeting these criteria would signify the success of the personas.
Planning
The objective of the initial workshop was to have team members independently generate as many personas as possible using Figjam. To facilitate this process, I designed a persona template that the team could copy and paste to complete. The entire exercise took one hour, during which each team member individually crafted 3-5 personas.
The template included:
Job title
Jobs to be done - tasks they do everyday, goals they are trying to accomplish by using Skilljar
Obstacles to achieving their Jobs To Be Done - frustrations, behavioral expectations
Representative examples of real people - LinkedIn profile links, existing interviews recorded in Chorus or interview notes
Initial Workshop
Figjam workshop templates
Filled out template from workshop
Completed persona workshop
After the team outlined the personas, I compiled all of them into a Google Doc and incorporated goals for each persona. This marked the phase where we collectively fine-tuned the personas, allowing team members to comment, express disagreement regarding specific jobs and obstacles, or propose reassignments to other personas.
These workshops focused on the meticulous refinement of persona details. Each persona was discussed individually.
Refinement Workshops
Snippet of Google Doc used to refine personas
Three personas were identified:
Executive
Program Owner
Content Creator
I created individual personas in a Google Doc, sharing them with project leads for a final review. After making minor adjustments, the personas were distributed to the team. The team's response was positive, with two Product Managers mentioning in the first week that they had already been referencing the personas in discussions and opportunity briefs.
Results