How to Use a User Persona Report

First, what are user personas?

User Personas allow you to get to know your target audience on a more intimate level, through your research.

When you collect data during research, the demographics are useful as is but as static numbers they don’t really serve you as much as if you create a set of user personas. When you create personas, you are transforming these numbers into better representations of your audience.

With user personas, the product team can better understand common pain points users have and better improve the design process and ultimately the product or service.

Other reasons to use user personas include:

• You can create a product without a user persona but difficult to empathise
• Personas are a strong communication tool to frame the product within the team
• Creates dynamic scenarios for satisfying different personas

Structure of the Report

Get your free template

For a free editable copy of our usability testing report template, please just fill in your email in this Google form here and we will send it to you.

Before using the Template, you need to have done these things:

• Collect real data through surveys and interviews in order to model your personas off of
• While collecting research findings, begin with a hypothesis for each persona and use a user journey map to emphasise a user’s action in steps

1. An Introduction to the Positioning Method

• Use a Matrix to identify personas 
• Map personality on a X & Y axis - identify 2 attributes that can be used to segment the audience into like groups 
• Find a common metric to track across different personas (e.g. tech savviness, hiking ability etc.)

2. A plotted chart displaying all the personas

• Useful to include this slide as the better the data is visualised/presented, the more likely they are to be used 
• Serves as a quick visual reminder to stakeholders

3. Personas based on clustered groups based on proximity

• Cluster multiple personas into groups based on proximity 

• Prioritise personas based on which of the identified personas are particularly important
• Name these profiles based on common traits belonging to the group

4. The Personas

• 3-5 unique personas based on first talking to actual users (always use real data)
• Can include a number of different demographics characteristics e.g. age, gender etc. in order to make them as realistic/plausible as possible. But not too much as overwhelming. Pick what’s relevant to your client’s company. 
• Photo should be realistic - not of a supermodel etc. 
• Highlight user motivations and pain points
   (in our example we use Goals & Needs) 
• Use icons to emphasise info.
   (use data visualisation, horizontal dotted or bar chart as in our e.g.) 
• Include whatever is helpful for your company! E.g. tech skill/savviness as Trailwalker is an app 
• Keep layouts consistent - the better the personas look, the more likely they are to be used (utilise images, symbols and graphics as much as possible) 
• Highlight the differences between personas - “use a quote as a key ‘takeaway’/differentiating factor”

Conclusion

Ultimately, personas have to be realistic - readers should be able to picture them If you want to learn more about user personas, stay tuned for our new full-length course on Personas, soon to be launched on UXBoost Academy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLe6jT_sfpc

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