Personas

 

Personas are a unique way to characterise the kinds of individual that a programme engages, such as staff, change agents, or beneficiaries.

 

Related Approaches and Tools

Digital Tools

Thematic Analysis

Sensemaking Workshop

Generating Insights

Personas are a tool to analyse and organise data about individuals. They can use qualitative, quantitative or mixed data sets and are often presented in a visually engaging manner. Personas are often presented as a set representing the breadth of experiences within a programme.

Within MEL, personas can be used both to describe a group of people and to help tailor interventions to meet a diverse set of experiences. 

Depending on the way that the data has been collected, they can be used for observational, retrospective, comparative, or longitudinal purposes.

Step 1. Clarify your purpose and data types

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?
Step 2. Create groups

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.

 

Step 3. Design Personas

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.

 

Step 4. Use Personas

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.

Travel Restricted Times

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.

Computer and internet access

  • Use a collaborative platform (Airtable, Mural, Micro, Google Slide or Google Sheet) to create groups and design personas. This can be conducted individually or collaboratively through audio/video conferencing.

Learn more on the digital tools page.

Learn More

Cooper A, Reimann R and Cronin D (2007) About Face 3.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Third Edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing Inc.

(start here!) Faller, P (2019) Putting Personas to Work in UX Design: What They Are and Why They’re Important. Xd Ideas Blog.

10 Tips to Develop Better Empathy Maps. Xd Ideas Blog.

Nielsen L (2019) Personas – User Focused Design. Second Edition. 20. Human–Computer Interaction Series. London: Springer London. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-7427-1.

Pruitt J and Adlin T (2006) The Persona Lifecycle Keeping People in Mind throughout Product Design. First Edition. Interactive Technologies. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

 

Materials

Machine Learning Tutorial

This slidedeck tutorial will walk you through the steps to create computer-generated personas using long-answer story responses. Download sample R-code here.

 
download

PDF | 2 MB

Sample Persona Design Slidedeck

This PowerPoint template will help you create printable personas for your project.

 

 
download

PPTX | 3 MB

Title_GTSA_Nobo Jatra Program Case Study Learning Report

Exploring gender transformations for staff members of iDE Cambodia’s SMSU3 WASH Program: Visual Persona Report

This visual report shares the results of the midline evaluation of a gender mainstreaming intervention in Cambodia. The evaluation focuses on the gender transformations for staff of the SMSU3 program. The report focuses on personas, an innovative evaluation technique used to create personas of change. 

Type: Visual Report

Date: August 2021

Explore other techniques and tools

Mapping

Mapping

Mapping   Mapping activities help explore themes of access and control focusing on questions of where, what, and who. Some common versions include mobility maps and resource mapping.  Related Approaches and Tools Mapping is an excellent way to understand physical...

Card Sorts

Card Sorts

Card Sorts   Card sorts are a participatory tool to engage respondents in categorising, organising or ordering information. Cards often have visuals or text information. Card sorts can be used in interviews or focus groups.   Related Approaches and Tools Card sorts...

Ladders

Ladders

Ladders and Spectrums   Laddering activities help identify how individuals perceive themselves within a range of behaviours, activities, or viewpoints. Some common versions include participation, happiness, safety, wellbeing, and confidence.  Related Approaches...