How to build user persona with data?
UX Research
Maria Correa
May 2, 2024
By understanding these personas, designers are able to create more effective, engaging, and intuitive interfaces that cater to the specific needs and expectations of the target user.
“The Persona allows you to easily list the customer profile, problems, requirements, and other essential information in order to develop realistic solutions based on the user's wishes.” - Persona Evolt Book
Understanding User Personas
User personas are essential UX tools designed to represent the key profiles of your target audience. These fictional, but research-based, personas go beyond demographics to delve deeper into users' behaviors, goals, challenges and motivations.
By creating personas, UX teams can identify with their audience, making it easier to design intuitive, user-centric experiences. These profiles guide decision-making at every stage of a project, ensuring that functionality, content and interfaces match users' real needs and expectations.
They are useful in many cases. For marketing, product and design professionals, personas are more than a reference: they're a strategic tool. They help prioritize development efforts, design targeted messages and offer seamless interactions that resonate deeply with users.
The journey to creating data-driven personas
Start with clear goals
The first step in persona creation is defining what you aim to achieve with your product or service. Understand the user’s problems, their goals, and the assumptions you’re making about them. This focus ensures that your data collection is targeted and relevant.
Organize your data
Collecting qualitative and quantitative data through user research is crucial. Interviews, surveys, and analytics provide insights into user behaviors and preferences. Organize this data by looking for patterns and commonalities that will form the basis of your personas.
You may also use frameworks such as jobs to be done, value proposition canvas, or empathy map to structure and refine your findings.
Create your persona profile
My favorite part because it is the one that integrates all your findings into a creative and summarized form of the user persona. In other words, this part involves filtering your research findings into character profiles that represent your user base. I teach how below:
Bio: Should describe an actionable behavior relatated to the problem in hand. Its bravery shows why the persona needs your product.
Demographics: As the name suggests, summarize all the demographic information you can gather about your persona. This can include name, age range, gender, marital/relationship status, income level, highest education, occupation, location, etc. This is quantifiable data taken from your research.
Picture: To make your persona more real, choose images that realistically represent your persona’s demographic and lifestyle, avoiding stereotypes.
Archetypes: archetypes help you to inform what the Persona is all about at a glance. For example: "Maria: the multitasking manager". Use descriptive adjectives of a personality type.
Quote: A quote would also give information about the User Persona. A good quote clearly represents your user. The most efficient quote is one pulled directly from your research or reworded from a combination of different user quotes.
Psychographics: Are used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. This includes:
Life/Work goals: who the user wants to be, end goals: what the user wants to do and experience goals: how the user wants to feel
Needs: What users want to achieve or solve through your product or service.
Frustrations: Pain points or obstacles that hinder their goals, often revealing opportunities for improvement.
Motivations: The driving forces that inspire users to act, whether it’s solving a problem, achieving a goal, or enjoying a specific experience.
Interests: Activities, topics, or areas that capture user attention, shaping their preferences and engagement.
Influences: External factors, such as trends, communities, or trusted opinions, that impact user decisions.
Beliefs: Core values and perceptions that shape how users interact with your brand or product.
Skills: A Persona’s skills describe the level of knowledge a user has relating to your product.
Refining with Real Insights: Ensure your personas are supported by data from your research. Quotes and stories should be authentic, reflecting real user feedback.
Refine your persona
Workshops provide a solid starting point for defining personas, but they should never be static. Personas must evolve as you gather more data through user research and product development. To refine your personas effectively, here are four tips grounded in actionable insights:
Leverage Qualitative Feedback
Conduct interviews and usability tests to capture nuanced insights about user behaviors, frustrations, and motivations. Aim for a minimum of 5-10 participants per key user group to identify consistent patterns and uncover unique perspectives.Analyze Quantitative Data
Use analytics tools, surveys, or behavioral data to validate assumptions and prioritize attributes. For example, a survey with at least 100-150 responses can reveal trends in needs and preferences across your target audience.Segment by Context
Recognize that personas may vary based on usage context (e.g., a product’s mobile vs. desktop experience). Collect data specific to each context to ensure personas reflect real-world behaviors and adapt accordingly.Iterate Regularly
Personas are living documents. Schedule regular reviews—quarterly or at major project milestones—and involve cross-functional teams to validate updates. Tools like Told help centralize feedback, making it easier to track evolving user needs and filter responses by sentiment, behavior type, or frequency.
Combine qualitative and quantitative data to refine your personas based on general trends and more specific user behaviors. You'll be able to draw up actionable, realistic profiles.
Leverage personas in UX Design
Integrate personas into every stage of the UX design process. Use them to inform decision-making, from feature prioritization to user interface design, ensuring that your product aligns with the needs and expectations of your target users. Personas can also facilitate communication and alignment within design teams, providing a shared understanding of who the user is.
Conclusion: The Power of Personas in UX
Using Personas in your design process is an invaluable tool that can significantly guide and inspire your design decisions. By clearly defining these archetypal users who represent the needs of a larger group, you can better understand and anticipate the goals, behaviors, and attitudes of your target audience. Once these Personas are defined, keep them updated and central to your design process, and you'll find they become invaluable allies in delivering exceptional user experiences.
Creating user personas from data is a strategic approach to empathizing with and understanding your users. By grounding your personas in data, you ensure they accurately represent your users, making them a powerful tool for creating designs that resonate. Remember, the goal is to bridge the gap between user data and human experiences, creating products that connect on an emotional level.
