Updated: May 28, 2024 - 11 min read So you want to build a digital product? History tells us that to create a successful product, you need to build it for someone. A product with no customers is like a floppy disk in the 21st century…useless. That’s why good Product Managers need to know how to create a product persona, to keep development teams customer-focused. Being customer-focused (or customer-oriented), helps us to build better products for one very simple reason: it helps our product to really solve a problem or fill a need. When you start building a product with no target user in mind, you can’t be sure that anyone is going to want it, or that you won’t have to make some serious iterations down the line to make it work better. It will be consigned in the annals of history as a failed product with no product-market fit, along with New Coke and the Zune. So let's get customer-focused and learn how to create a product persona!
Product personas are descriptions of fictitious characters reflecting the values, behaviors, and characteristics of a product’s ideal user. Teams use Personas to align around specific user types for development. Having qualitative information about potential users helps drive decision-making and guides team members when considering different options. The concept of the User Persona was created by Alan Cooper, a noted software developer, in 1983. He devised a prototype of what the Persona would become based on informal interviews with seven to eight users. Product designers Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang define product personas as:
“ Fictional characters, which you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. ”
It’s a key component of UX design, and helps to influence design decisions, making sure that your product works for a real user and doesn’t just look good! Going beyond UX, a good set of personas can influence decisions at all levels and across all aspects of development.
As for the product persona document itself, you can really let your imagination run wild. There’s not really a wrong way to create a user persona document, it depends entirely on the personality of your team and your brand.
To show you how easy it can be, we made these mock-up user personas using a tool like Canva in under 20 minutes, by repurposing existing templates.
They’re mostly used internally, so adding a pop of color and some images can make them more engaging content for meetings, but you can always opt for a plain black-and-white table.
The point is not to create something pretty, but to create a document that promotes empathy for your users and generates more understanding of who you’re building for among your teams.
Product personas are essential for cross-functional collaboration between design, marketing, sales, product, and developers. Making a successful, user-centric product is only possible when everyone is on the same page about who it's for.
There’s also no exact list of what you should include when you create a product persona, as that entirely depends on your product.
You might also be interested in: What Is Product Design?
The terms user persona and product persona are used interchangeably in product management. These terms put a face to a segment of current or potential end users who are defined by a particular set of use habits (frequency, session duration), pain points, technical skill, and, in some cases, budget or purchasing habits.
The buyer persona, on the other hand, might never use the product. So, why do they matter? Buyer personas represent the people who make the decisions about whether to invest in the product. In B2B products, the buyer persona is of particular importance as they are the ones who research solutions for entire teams and companies.
For example, a buyer persona might be a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a mid-sized company looking for cost-effective, scalable project management software.
There are four reasons why product personas are essential for Product Managers:
Your design team will use product personas to build a more meaningful user experience. For you as a Product Manager, they give you a common ground to begin conversations with your designers, particularly if you don’t have a design background. If you both understand and respect the product personas, you’ve got common ground. And common ground is absolutely vital for influencing without authority.
As we’ve mentioned before, they also keep the entire team customer-focused. Everyone has it written down in black and white who they’re designing for, programming for, coding for, or marketing, too.
Storytelling is a huge part of being a Product Manager, and product personas help you to sell the story of your product. They paint a picture of what it’ll do after launch, who it will help, and how. It helps stakeholders to place themselves in the user’s shoes and better understand the purpose of the product.
Marketing teams also make the most out of personas by using them to guide their marketing efforts. It’s helpful, when designing marketing campaigns, to understand who you’re going to reach. Do they spend a lot of time on social media, or is it easier to reach them via email? Would traditional ad campaigns work, or would guerrilla marketing be better?
The first step in persona development is to consolidate what you already know about your users. This could be based on existing data if you’re working on a new feature for an existing product with an existing user base, or it might be entirely driven by assumptions. (Don’t worry, we’re about to get into the real data soon enough!)
You also need to figure out what information you need to gather when conducting user research.
Build a list of questions based on the information you’re trying to gather. It’s essential to have a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data. These can be some general questions like:
You can conduct your user surveys in a number of ways. You can create a landing page and send it out via email or social media campaign. You could also create a pop up on the most popular or relevant page of your website. Another option is to launch a beta version of your product or feature, and ask the exclusive beta users to fill out the survey in exchange for getting access.
If you’re competent in product data analysis, this is your time to shine. It can be a little intimidating to face what looks like a wall of data if you’re not that confident with analytics, but there are a couple of things that basically any Product Manager can do.
Once you’ve analyzed the data and have a clear picture of who your users are, it’s time to create your product personas. There are many design tools out there that you can find below to create your personas, like Figma, Sketch, or our free persona template.
You could also work with your design team to create more aesthetically pleasing personas or find a specialist on Dribbble – which doubles as a great place to find inspiration if you want a crack at designing your own.
And don’t forget, your Personas must be:
You could go for something bright but clean and professional, like this example from Ofer Ariel:
This persona card by Adam Kalin takes a storytelling approach:
This design by Joseph Hren includes a series of sliding scales as a way of displaying information:
To choose what information to include in your product personas, think about what information teams need to know to build (what platforms they prefer, age bracket other brands they admire, usage data, etc) and what will make your users seem more human (name, hobbies, skills, personality traits, etc).
Get to know your users to build the right solution for the right audience.
