Charactersatwork theuseofpersonasinproductmanagement-brainmates-100712051602-phpapp02

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Characters at workThe use of personas in product management

White paper | presentation July 2010

Adrienne Tan, co-founder of brainmates has published a white paper on a topic that is highly relevant to product managers.

Overview

The origin of the persona tool

Use of personas and their benefits

Types of persona including primary and secondary buyers, negative personas and family personas

Tips and guidelines on good persona development

Ways to avoid pitfalls and challenges related to personas

To get your free copy of the white paper please email info@brainmates.com.au

Effective product management requires practitioners to solve lucrative customer problems that drive significant value for businesses over a period of time.

Product managers love to solve problems

The brainmates Product Delivery Cycle provides a structure that defines tools and activities that help companies deliver profitable products and services

Personas can be used to help to define, develop and deployproducts that solve customer problems.

What are personas?

A key tool for product managers

User personas are “archetypical” customers of a product or service

User personas bridge the gap between an abstract target market group and

real customers.

Developing a persona helps product managers focus on the goals,

motivations and behaviours of their target customer and provides a

meaningful way of focussing on the whole target market group.

Benefits of creating personas

Encourage product managers to think of the buyer and/or user of their product

Distil large target markets into a single person that stakeholders can relate to and understand

Provide a focal point for planning and help solve disagreements over product decisions

Provide product managers with solid evidence against other interest groups who are making uninformed or snap decisions

Benefits of creating personas

It’s easier to satisfy your customer when you know your customer

Knowing the customer helps businesses to make the right product decisions and deliver optimal value to the customer

If the customer’s needs and wants are met then customers are more likely to be satisfied.

This will help the business to differentiate and stand-out from the competition

Developing a persona helps keep product definition and development

focused on the customer which in turn leads to revenue generation and

achievement of business goals and objectives

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A brief history of personas

The term user persona was coined by Alan Cooper in 1998 in his book ‘The inmates are running the asylum’

User personas were borne to prevent software from being developed in an ad hoc, random or accidental manner

User personas helped teams ensure products were user driven, not feature driven

Personas are now a heavily researched area of product management, development and related disciplines

A brief history of personas

Product managers, user experience designers and developers use personas to:

Fuel ideation and development processes

Create products and services including physical goods, retail experiences, software applications and more

Test, refine and improve the experiences involved in using products and services

Anticipate future opportunities

Identify factors of value on which to differentiate from competitors

Use of personas today

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Types of personas

Several personas can be created and each provides different insights that help in product design, development and deployment

Types of personas

Learn more about the definition, development of, and uses of each of these person types in the full white paper.

Freely available by contacting

info@brainmates.com.au

Primary persona Secondary persona Negative persona Group or family persona

Personas should be developed during the Product Planning stage

When to create personas

The Market Requirements articulate customer requirements which may include buyers and users.

It’s best to ensure a solid understanding of the ‘customer’ before preparing requirements that feed into later stages of product requirements

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How to create personas

Creating personas requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The steps below explain the subsequent process and these are defined in full detail in the white paper.

How to create personas

1. Market segmentation 2. Customer research – primary

and secondary 3. Complete persona – using the

brainmates persona template

To get your free copy of the white paper please email info@brainmates.com.au

There are some common pitfalls and risks associated with creating personas:

Be focused – where appropriate, it’s better to create multiple personas than to try to wrap different customers into one

Don’t act on assumptions or hunches – base persona details on real, accurate and validated information

Ensure you review personas with all stakeholders – customer service, operations, sales, research, marketing and other staff

Where possible, gather direct input from real customers

Persona beware!

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Ultimately, it’s about understanding your customers

The use of personas in product management and related disciplines can help internal and external stakeholders to better understand the target market and customers.

These ‘Characters’ help bring life to otherwise dry and complex statistics and profiles.

Personas transform data and details into true and meaningful insight.

Personas are a useful tool for product managers in the definition, development and deployment of products and services

Conclusions

email info@brainmates.com.au to request your free copy

Request the white paper

Page no.

Product innovation and design.

brainmates leads companies to define, develop and deploy customer-centric products and services.

Phone: +61 (2) 9232 8147

Email: info@brainmates.com.au

Web: www.brainmates.com.au