Workshop: User Persona - Discovery Phase
- Magdalene Schifferer (Unlicensed)
Phase: Discovery
Summary: Participants create fictitious characters representing key characteristics of user group
What is a User Persona workshop?
User personas are fictitious characters who represent specific key characteristics of a user group. In a user persona workshop, participants gather to create user personas to gain an understanding of different user types. Ideally, user personas should be based on research data (e.g. user interviews, field studies). If research data is not available, “proto-personas” can be created based on assumptions the team has about users. User persona workshops commonly run for about one hour.
When to use a User Persona workshop
Creating user personas are generally the first step of any product development team after some user research has been completed.
Benefits and pitfalls
Benefits
Team members gain a better understanding user types, context, problems, and motivations
“Proto-personas” can be used as a hypothesis to compare with future user data
Pitfalls
Can be used as justification for poor product decisions
Traits captured may be aspirational vs what real users want and need as a result of the persona’s fictional nature and creation at the beginning of product development cycle
Planning
How to plan a user persona workshop:
Create a cross functional participant list including team members, stakeholders, and other individuals who have contact with users (e.g. salespeople, support, business managers) to attend the workshop.
Gather existing research and artifacts (if available) to share with participants with advance of the workshop (e.g. user interviews, field research, analytics, research reports, etc.). You can create a shared repository for participants to access.
Choose a location or virtual platform to hold workshop.
Print multiple copies of the user persona template.
Gather pens and notepads for participants and moderator.
Conducting a User Persona workshop
How to run a persona workshop:
Divide participants into groups of 4-6.
Assign each team a user type.
Ask each group to fill out a user persona for each user type (see Appendix). Begin with Name and Title/Background sections (this can be updated at end of exercise). It is suggested participants give users a unique name (e.g. Danny Developer) so it is catchy, memorable and makes it easy for all participants to identify user types.
Each template has four sections, as listed in the example below. Remind participants to answer questions from the users perspective, and not their own.
Can include a single-sentence quote to summarize the user persona.
It is important to note demographic data is not considered to add value to personas during this workshop and may lead the team in the wrong direction if included.
Outcome
At the completion of the user persona workshop, it is expected participants will gain insight into the following design artifacts and concepts:
Completed user personas for team and stakeholders to reference during the research and design process. Personas can be displayed in a common area or shared repository accessible to all team members
Help team members put themselves in the product users’ position, keeping their needs and goals at the forefront during the development process
Appendix
References
Falmann, Timea. “3 Useful UX Workshops to Get Your Team on the Same Page.” uxstudio, 14 Aug. 2019, 3 Useful UX Workshops to Get Your Team on the Same Page.
Frick, Tim. “How to Get the Most Out of User Personas.” Mightybytes, 16 Mar. 2021,
How to Create More Inclusive User Personas.
Additional Resources
“How to Run a Personas Workshop.” Medium, 16 Jul. 2017,
How To Run a Personas Workshop. Retrieved 8 Nov. 2021.
Li, Huimin. “A Step-by-Step Guide to Constructing a Persona Workshop.” Mind the Product, 1 Nov. 2017, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/step-step-guide-constructing-persona-workshop/.
“Persona Workshop.” Miro, Persona Workshop Template | Miroverse . Retrieved 8 Nov. 2021.
Salazar, Kim. “Why Personas Fail.” Nielsen Norman Group, 28 Jan. 2018,
Why Personas Fail.