The following are samples of some much needed Personas I created most recently. Past personas were not based on data, but synthesized from internal employees perceptions, or created by 1-2 individuals.
I feel strongly that User Personas should be based on data. For these I created a Persona Strategy document, interviewed 15 customers, ran an in app-survey, and gathered pain points from Productboard. The outcome is employees had some of their assumptions validated, but also new information surfaced that wasn’t what they originally perceived. The larger body of data was presented, shared and accessible to all to review and gain new understanding of the customer types. Employees had a renewed sense of why Personas are important, and Personas will be revalidated and refreshed each year using similar research methods.
Persona Strategy 2023
Objective
Create three key personas—admin, team manager, and developer—whose goals and characteristics will represent the backgrounds, motivations, pain points, and needs of our users.
We’ll use these personas to create reliable and realistic representations of our users to guide us in making empathetic data-driven design choices. We’re gathering qualitative and quantitative data to build these user personas. The creation of personas will support Product’s broader goal of increased customer retention in 2023.
Primary Research
We’re conducting primary research, surveys and interviews, to gain first-hand insights into our users’ attitudes. As we conduct primary research, we’ll be collecting demographic information about our users, as well as information on their main goals, mindsets, pain points, and interests.
| Type | Where | Who | What | Status |
| Survey | SCW Platform (Userflow) | SCW users | Conduct two separate surveys through UserFlow in different areas on the platform to reach the broadest sample of users, including both devs and admins. For example, the survey will prompt users after completing a mission for developers and after adding a course for admins. These surveys will capture information on users like role, years of experience, security maturity, pain points, and motivations. | PREP |
| Internal Interviews | Google Meet | CS & Sales team members | Conduct internal interviews with CS and Sales team members to leverage their knowledge of the motivators, inhibitors, and pain points of each of our targeted user personas—admin, team manager, senior developer, and mid-level developer.
| IN PROGRESS |
| User interviews | Google Meet | SCW users | Conduct interviews with users based on recommendations for CS. These interviews will give us first-hand information on the backgrounds, needs, and goals of our users.
| PREP |
Secondary Research
In addition to conducting primary research, we’re leveraging existing research and data to further build out the personas.
| Type | Where | Who | What | Status |
| User Personas | Confluence | – | Review existing SCW user personas and pull relevant pieces of information. | IN PROGRESS |
| Data | SCW Platform | SCW users | Partner with data team to pull insights captured from users from the SCW platform. | IN PROGRESS |
| Feedback | Productboard | SCW users/admin | Review tickets in Productboard to access first-hand feedback submitted by users.
| IN PROGRESS |
| Data | SCW Platform | Product Trial users | Partner with product trial team to pull demographic insights captured from users from user product trials. | COMPLETE |
| Blogs | Internet | SCW users | Research existing blogs and threads written by users who use or have used the SCW platform before. These sources will ideally have information on users’ attitudes and experiences with the platform. | IN PROGRESS |
Deliverables
- Team manager persona
- Admin persona
- Developer
Persona Rollout
- Compile data and insights and use research to define three user personas
- Input defined user personas into design files
- Socialize personas with the greater Product team via slack
- Link personas in Productboard
Persona Validation
We recognize the importance of keeping our personas current as time goes on. To validate our personas, we’ll stay connected to our users. We plan to publish a survey that’s available year-round to users who seek out giving feedback. This survey will likely be populated on the SCW help page. In addition to our survey, we’ll:
- Regularly check Productboard for user feedback
- Partner with Data Analysis to stay up-to-date on user demographics
- Partner with CS to stay current on user feedback and opportunities to chat with users
- Parse through internet resources like blogs and threads to gauge users’ thoughts and attitudes on SCW
Resources
