VISUALIZATION - PERSONA

Challenge & Selection

For my internship, me and a classmate undertook the project of developing a new line of longboards  (skateboards) for a local company. These products would aim for a complete new market for both us  and the company even though some collective experience could be found. The challenge was to  understand our potential users of the products and to see if there were any undiscovered potential  users from which the market could grow. Besides doing a large research on present products, brands,  new technologies and skateboarding culture etc. we decided to develop a set of personas and to give  them a visual representaion. We chose this tool both to learn about skateboarders and  skateboarding culture and to widen the scope of ideas later generated in brainstorming.

Application

Creating personas is a great way for both understanding the customer and putting the user in focus  when creating ideas. It can diverse the ideas created in later stages and it provides insights for  evaluating those ideas. We started off doing observations in the skateboarding community and  combined that with a brainstorming for potential undiscovered users. This resulted in 6 personas:  The fall-back skateboarder, the trend-setter, the business snob, the sports fanatic, the park skater and  the environmental nerd. We then conducted a range of interviews both with representatives for each  persona and with subjects that understood the type of person typical to a persona. This resulted in a  presentation of each persona including a cartoon drawing, quotes from the interviews, a list of  psychographic characteristics and a matrix showing how sensible they were to price, sustainability,  design, etc.  These personas were then used as a starting point in the brainstorm session where we  first interpret each persona before creating ideas.

Pic: example of the park skater and the trend-setter

Insight & Approach

In the beginning our idea was to use personas only during the first phases but we ended up using  them throughout the project. From research, insights to idea generation and later benchmarking  prototypes and building product identity and brand. The method helped us in some specific ways  that I wouldn’t have thought of beforehand.

  During brainstorming sessions, I liked how we could use the personas to expand our ideas  and think of new concepts aimed at our stakeholder’s behavior and interests. This effect was  planned but I later realized how important our personas were to center the creative process  around our users.

  To have a visual representation of the stakeholders led to efficient group communication and  helped us keep track of who we were designing for. We kept them close and let them guide  us, constantly asking questions: would this appeal to say “the trend-setter”?

  It served beautifully as a guide of reference when evaluating ideas, concepts and making  decisions for our stakeholders. It helped us not to be overprotective of our own ideas and it  lowered the risk of making biased decisions.

If I would have done the project again I would also have tried a creative workshop before presenting  the personas. The output of that might have resulted in yet another undiscovered target group that  we didn’t specify in the research.

