Tool: Personas (empathy)

One of the best ways to better solve someone else’s problems is to understand them clearly, understand their lives. And there is no better way to do so that try to be them, be in their shoes and see the world from their perspective. Obviously, we can never actually be in someone else’s skin, but we can do a pretty good job trying to gather as much information about them as possible to have a better, more insightful picture.

Personas are a great tool to do exactly that! Personas are reliable and realistic representations of your key audience, the person you’re trying to help. It doesn’t matter if this is your friend, a company that hired you to fix their processes, ar a user of an application that a company is trying to reinvent… Whoever the main „object” is – personas will give you the opportunity to imagine them in details. Combined with the empathy map, they form a great knowledge wiki about the users!

It’s crucial to be as precise and detailed as possible, ask lots of questions, note down all the information, follow up their stories and read between the lines. Personas are only as effective as the time and research put into gathering the information. To be effective, personas need to:

• Be a real representation of your audience (understand correctly whose problem you’re solving or who is the target of the solution).
• Express the major needs and expectations of the above-mentioned group.
• Provide a clear view of all necessary details, including stories, pain points, hopes, and expectations.
• Describe real people with real problems, stories, and plans.

Having this encyclopedia of info about your audience is essential in steering the ideation in the right direction.

Using/creating personas is simple like 1-2-3. Grab a template and fill it with the information needed/mentioned. It really is that self-explanatory! Put as much info as possible, be as details as possible, and save it for reference! Just remember one rule: do it from the perspective of your user, not yours! Always think as your user would think, trying to imagine it via their life.