Personas in Play
This blog was originally published as a LinkedIn article in August 2022. Cover photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
I have two incredible nieces. They are both brilliant, creative, caring girls. They also just got their own rooms. When I went to visit them last month, their rooms were an absolute mess.
We were getting ready to travel which meant they had to really clean them, not just hide everything in the closet or under the bed. No one wants to come home to a messy house, especially when you’re dragging a week’s worth of dirty laundry with you.
My oldest niece is 11 and a reader. When I was that age, I would get absorbed in a book and forget everything else, including the state of my room. I started helping her get it together. We organized like items, decided whether the clothes on the floor were clean or dirty, and put empty cups back in the kitchen.
Once I finished, I went to the 8-year-old’s room. It was a completely different animal. Instead of clothes, her floor was covered with toys. She had clusters of vignettes where she would have the toys act out different scenes. Everything was carefully arranged. She had even made tiny worksheets for the characters to turn in for the school scene. Sure, we had clothes to put away and clutter to demystify, but we pretty much left the toys as is. For safety, I made sure she had a clear walkway from the door to the bed.
What does this have to do with personas?
Good personas are like the vignettes in my niece’s bedroom. They are richly designed, deeply understood stories that center on dynamic characters. When we use them, they continue to evolve and expand. They work themselves deeper into our thinking. We keep them around because we constantly return to them and ask more questions.
By contrast, the books my oldest niece reads are present and gone. They are absorbing in the moment and then she moves onto the next series or trend. The characters are engrossing, but temporary. Their importance lasts for the duration of the book. A stellar or important novel may resonate a little longer, but she’s primarily consuming stories rather than exploring and living in them. (Though, she would want you to know that she is not just a reader, but also a published author - thank you summer camp.)
When we explore and design personas in dynamic ways, they have the greatest potential to impact our organizations and the way we serve our customers. We can step into the stories and empathize with the characters that embody our customer research. Static personas that stay on the page and the shelf have limited value for your organization or your customer.
Embrace your inner child and step into the story of your personas.
In the two years since we originally posted this piece, my nieces have grown so much. The oldest is now 13. Recently, she flew by herself for the first time and stayed with me for a week of Auntie Camp. She’s into anything that feels grown up. She came with me to work events and could hold her own in conversations with my clients. We ended the week with a Batman movie marathon — one Michael Keaton, two Christian Bales, and one Robert Pattinson so she could see the evolution in story telling. To her 13-year-old mind, the most “adult” thing you can do is stay up late and eat whatever you want. Most adults I know feel like they’re succeeding if they go to bed at a reasonable hour, sleep through the night and stick to a diet that helps them feel their best.
When we define our customers, we’re prone to teenage thinking - defining people from the sliver of their lives that we see. When we - through research - let our customers define themselves for us - we’re better able to see them as they truly are. Personas remain an effective tool for synthesizing our research in a way that overwrites our misperceptions with useful depictions that match the customer’s reality.