- Personas are not one size fits all.
What I mean by that is that you can't just create a set
of general user archetypes to represent customers
without first deciding what the personas are for
and what their scope of influence should be.
What often happens in practice is that somebody,
a stakeholder, a client, a product manager,
or an account manager will ask a UX practitioner
to create personas without giving them any direction
about the purpose or goal behind them.
To those who aren't well-versed in how personas are created
and how they influence work, this seems like a great idea.
You'll end up with one overarching set of personas
that can be used for any project going forward.
This seems fantastic, because first of all,
you get the most bang for your buck.
And secondly, your customers and users should be the same
for any project you might undertake in the future.
So the same persona should be relevant
for everything, right?
Well, unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that.
Personas can have broad or narrow scope.
And the scope of the personas influences the data
that will be in them.
Think of a financial company, for example,
let's say this company has multiple lines of business,
retirement savings, banking, and mutual fund investing.
The company could have personas with broad scope,
where they have one set of personas
that represents the entire company's customers
across the various business units.
These personas are broad in scope,
because they influence a wide array of contexts,
as in multiple areas of the business
with dozens of products and projects.
On the other hand, they could also have personas
with more narrow scope.
So perhaps they create a set of personas
to guide the redesign of a single product
within a single line of business.
So for example, a mobile application
for their banking business.
These personas would have narrow focus,
because they would influence one project
for one line of business.
Now this is all important, but determining the scope
for your persona should be based
on an even more important question.
The first question you should ask yourself is
what are these personas for,
or what do I need them to help me do.
After you've answered this question,
then you can determine what the appropriate scope is
for your personas.
The reason is because scope impacts the richness
of the insights and your resulting personas.
So you'll also need to understand the trade-offs
of creating both broad and narrow-scope personas
and how that influences their usefulness.
Let's look at the trade-offs in detail.
The broader the scope of the personas,
the shallower the data supporting those personas.
And on the other end of the spectrum,
the more narrow the scope,
the more rich the persona is will be
in actionable data needed for decision making
within that targeted scope.
Success depends on matching the scope to the goal
of your personas.
The reason that broad scope data is more shallow
is because it's really not realistic to find segments
of customers with similar motivations,
attitudes, and behaviors across a broad array
of situations and scenarios.
People's behaviors and needs are influenced dramatically
by the context of the product or service in question.
So sure, you can find similar segments of people
across a large array of products and services,
but you'll need to use fewer and more general attributes
to describe them.
Broad-scope personas might include high-level data
such as the type
of savings vehicles these users might be interested in,
their disposable income,
their ability to save, and their level of existing knowledge
about saving money.
This type of general data
helps you make high-level decisions such as deciding tone
of marketing messages or determining the type
of educational content needed by these segments.
However, because the data is so broad and shallow,
it won't really be useful for targeted decision making
within that large scope.
So it wouldn't be effective
for designing a mobile banking application, for example.
On the other hand, with a narrow scope,
there's much less context to consider,
so this allows you to find themes on users' motivations,
attitudes, and behaviors, as they relate directly
to the context of the product or project in question.
This type of information is what's useful
for making design decisions.
So if your goal for the personas is to use them
for the design of something specific,
you need to have narrow-scope personas
that are based on that specific context,
this way you have rich enough insights
about that context to do so.
You can't effectively use large-scope personas
for that purpose because they won't have the richness
and data you need.
So if you're ever asked to create personas,
set yourself up for success.
Set your stakeholders up for success.
Success depends on matching the scope to the goal
of your personas.
Always ask what your stakeholder's goal is.
Consult with an educate them to help them understand
what type of personas will help them achieve that goal.
Doing this will help you create the right tool for the job
as well as ensuring all stakeholders
understand what they're getting and not getting in return.