Personas

In this first step, facilitators will need to reflect on exactly what they hope to achieve using personas. Some points to think through include:

• Will the personas only be for monitoring or also to creating strategies for change?
• Change agents, beneficiaries, or staff?
• What types of data do I have, or do I require?

There are many ways to create groups with data. They can use either manual or computer-driven (algorithmic) methods. All these methods rely on two types of information: demographic and experiential. Experiences are often obtained through surveys, interviews or narrative collection.

We focus on manual methods here, and if you wish to learn about computer-driven approaches, explore the further resources section. This process can be completed in a workshop, collaboratively online, or even individually. But it is good to have multiple people review the results to ensure quality.

1. Begin identifying key demographic characteristics within your respondents (gender, age, role, location etc.)
2. Next, identify key experiential characteristics within your respondents. Examples include:
   • Sentiment analysis – How positive (or negative) is their experience?
   • Verb-mapping – What verbs do they use in their stories/responses (think, see, do, feel, have)?
   • Themes – What words/ideas are common in their stories/responses?
   • Sphere-mapping – Where do the stories/responses take place (home, work. etc.)?
   • People-mapping – Who else is involved in the stories/responses? Who acts? Who benefits?
   • Contributions – What things have been involved in the stories/responses (programme, training etc.)?
   • Time-mapping – When do the stories/responses take place (before program, during, after etc.)
3. Map these demographic and experiential characteristics to each respondent.
4. You may want to build a flowchart, network map, spectrum, matrix, or mind-map to organise the process.
5. Check to see how many people accurately fit into your categories. Refine categories as required.
6. Repeat! This is an iterative art form. Not everyone will fit into a category but aim for as many people as possible.
7. Depending on the volume of data and your purposes, aim for 5-10 groups.

Once the groups have been identified, it is time to design the flashcards and or visuals that bring each group ‘to life’. All the information should be fictional (not real) and should aim to create composite characters rather than direct depictions of real people. A team member who wasn’t involved in data collection, may be a good fit to do this design work.

Each persona will require:

• Name or title (fictional)
• Brief story of the persona character, demographic characteristics and a brief narration of the change.
• Actual quotations from participants who aligned with the persona. Edited lightly for clarity.
• Number of participants with similar stories as indicated by the count of female and male figures.
• Image of the persona character. We prefer cartoons to ensure distance from the respondents, but other example use photos.

Designing personas can be done by hand in a collage or even a PowerPoint slide. A sample slidedeck is included in the supplementary materials.

If you are stuck, use an empathy map to help craft a narrative around each persona.

Test the personas with the respondents to ensure that the results accurately reflect their experiences.

The final step is to put the personas to use. We recommend printing them out and having them on hand for an intervention planning workshop. For example, allow each workshop participant to ‘adopt a persona’. This helps interventions respond actively to the diverse needs of respondents.

While persona generation is best done in person, it can also be completed using participatory methods and online tools. However, for the best results this should be done with internet access and computers.

Learn more on the digital tools page.