What is it? The Personas method is a fictional archetyping process that represents the users’ perspective and embodies the project’s values. This method identifies all the potential users profiles in order to design tools that can be relevant to all these different types of users.

Objectives: To create and design all the user types or profiles that make up your project’s target audience.

Resources needed: Paper or flipchart in order to write and describe your user persona. Alternatively, you can also use online tools such as Miro, that offer personas templates.

Time: The Personas methodology can be planned for 1 hour-sessions. Some preliminary preparation is needed.

Suggested number of participants: 6-12 maximum. Small groups representing different areas work better – the dynamics allow more interaction and longer time for discussion.

Example of practical application: During the design or the implementation phase, use the personas method to identify the different types of users who might use the project’s results. The personas will then guide the ideation phase and allow you to design the project’s results in the best possible way to meet the needs of your target audience.

Steps to apply the method: Creating personas requires some preparatory work: you need to gather information and data regarding your audience. You must then analyse the data by finding patterns that make it possible to group similar people together into types of users or personas. Once this is done, follow these steps:

• Discuss with your team the purpose of creating personas. How will it help you?
• Define your personas by answering, for each of them, the following questions:
• Who are they? In which context do they find themselves?
• What is their main goal?
• What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?
• You can create as many personas as you need.
• Reflect on your findings with your team to define the next steps of the project.

Stage when to use this method:

• Project design
• Project implementation

Suggested tools:

• Miro’s introduction to create personas
• Miro’s template to create personas

Visual sample: To learn more about creating personas, watch this video.