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Characters at workThe use of personas in product management
White paper | presentation July 2010
Adrienne Tan, co-founder of brainmates has published a white paper on a topic that is highly relevant to product managers.
Overview
The origin of the persona tool
Use of personas and their benefits
Types of persona including primary and secondary buyers, negative personas and family personas
Tips and guidelines on good persona development
Ways to avoid pitfalls and challenges related to personas
To get your free copy of the white paper please email [email protected]
Effective product management requires practitioners to solve lucrative customer problems that drive significant value for businesses over a period of time.
Product managers love to solve problems
The brainmates Product Delivery Cycle provides a structure that defines tools and activities that help companies deliver profitable products and services
Personas can be used to help to define, develop and deployproducts that solve customer problems.
What are personas?
A key tool for product managers
User personas are “archetypical” customers of a product or service
User personas bridge the gap between an abstract target market group and
real customers.
Developing a persona helps product managers focus on the goals,
motivations and behaviours of their target customer and provides a
meaningful way of focussing on the whole target market group.
Benefits of creating personas
Encourage product managers to think of the buyer and/or user of their product
Distil large target markets into a single person that stakeholders can relate to and understand
Provide a focal point for planning and help solve disagreements over product decisions
Provide product managers with solid evidence against other interest groups who are making uninformed or snap decisions
Benefits of creating personas
It’s easier to satisfy your customer when you know your customer
Knowing the customer helps businesses to make the right product decisions and deliver optimal value to the customer
If the customer’s needs and wants are met then customers are more likely to be satisfied.
This will help the business to differentiate and stand-out from the competition
Developing a persona helps keep product definition and development
focused on the customer which in turn leads to revenue generation and
achievement of business goals and objectives
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A brief history of personas
The term user persona was coined by Alan Cooper in 1998 in his book ‘The inmates are running the asylum’
User personas were borne to prevent software from being developed in an ad hoc, random or accidental manner
User personas helped teams ensure products were user driven, not feature driven
Personas are now a heavily researched area of product management, development and related disciplines
A brief history of personas
Product managers, user experience designers and developers use personas to:
Fuel ideation and development processes
Create products and services including physical goods, retail experiences, software applications and more
Test, refine and improve the experiences involved in using products and services
Anticipate future opportunities
Identify factors of value on which to differentiate from competitors
Use of personas today
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Types of personas
Several personas can be created and each provides different insights that help in product design, development and deployment
Types of personas
Learn more about the definition, development of, and uses of each of these person types in the full white paper.
Freely available by contacting
Primary persona Secondary persona Negative persona Group or family persona
Personas should be developed during the Product Planning stage
When to create personas
The Market Requirements articulate customer requirements which may include buyers and users.
It’s best to ensure a solid understanding of the ‘customer’ before preparing requirements that feed into later stages of product requirements
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How to create personas
Creating personas requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The steps below explain the subsequent process and these are defined in full detail in the white paper.
How to create personas
1. Market segmentation 2. Customer research – primary
and secondary 3. Complete persona – using the
brainmates persona template
To get your free copy of the white paper please email [email protected]
There are some common pitfalls and risks associated with creating personas:
Be focused – where appropriate, it’s better to create multiple personas than to try to wrap different customers into one
Don’t act on assumptions or hunches – base persona details on real, accurate and validated information
Ensure you review personas with all stakeholders – customer service, operations, sales, research, marketing and other staff
Where possible, gather direct input from real customers
Persona beware!
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Ultimately, it’s about understanding your customers
The use of personas in product management and related disciplines can help internal and external stakeholders to better understand the target market and customers.
These ‘Characters’ help bring life to otherwise dry and complex statistics and profiles.
Personas transform data and details into true and meaningful insight.
Personas are a useful tool for product managers in the definition, development and deployment of products and services
Conclusions
email [email protected] to request your free copy
Request the white paper
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Product innovation and design.
brainmates leads companies to define, develop and deploy customer-centric products and services.
Phone: +61 (2) 9232 8147
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.brainmates.com.au