Personas and journeys from evidence
🎯You'll be able to
Build a persona and a current-state journey from research evidence, and avoid personas based on stereotypes.
🏠The everyday picture
A tailor who measures you makes a suit that fits. One who guesses from your age and city makes a suit for someone who doesn't exist.
📘What it really is
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A persona is a short description of a group of users, written as one person, to keep the team focused on real needs. It's useful only if it comes from research.
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What goes in: goals, the situation they're in, what gets in their way, devices, and a quote from research. Age, job and photo are optional and can mislead.
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What stays out: guesses dressed as facts, stereotypes ("older people can't use phones"), and real participants' identities.
- Proto-personas are written from the team's assumptions before research. Label them clearly and replace them with evidence.
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A current-state journey (UX4 goes deeper) lists the steps people take today, with what they do, think and feel at each, and where problems appear.
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Behaviour over demographics: "books for a parent, on a shared phone, in a hurry" helps design more than "female, 34, Lucknow".
📝A worked example
Input: the survey and the session notes.
Steps:
- Find patterns in the survey: 95 of 120 on mobile; "finding a free slot" the most common problem. Note what the survey can't show well: only 15 of the 120 respondents were 60 or over.
- Find patterns in the sessions: P1 books with a son's help; P3 has a small screen; P4 worries about privacy.
- Write one persona:
The careful first-timer. Books a check-up a few times a year, usually on an Android phone, sometimes for a parent. Hasn't booked online before and isn't sure a booking has worked until someone confirms it. Gets stuck when choices aren't clearly marked or errors aren't explained. "It needs to tell me clearly when something is chosen." (P1)
Expected output: every sentence in the persona can be traced to a survey figure or a session note.
🌍Where it's used
- Product teams keep two to four personas on the wall and refer to them in design reviews.
- Public services describe users by needs ("I need to renew my licence without visiting an office").
- Marketing uses segments; designers should check that design personas come from behaviour, not only demographics.
📝Case scenario
A banking team's persona "Rahul, 28, tech-savvy" drove a design full of gestures. Research showed many customers were older relatives using a son's or daughter's phone. The team rewrote its personas around behaviours, and added clear buttons for the main actions.
🖱️Try it
Write a second SehatSlot persona from the evidence, for example someone who wants a Sunday clinic quickly. Success: every claim has a source (a survey figure or a participant ID), and there's no stereotype.
⚠️Common mistakes
- Personas from imagination. Sign: no source for any sentence. Fix: cite the evidence, or label it a proto-persona.
- Stereotypes. Sign: abilities assumed from age or gender. Fix: describe behaviour seen in research.
- Using a real participant as the persona. Sign: P4's details copied in. Fix: combine patterns; keep participants anonymous.
🛠️For your project
The capstone case studies start with who the change was for; a persona built from the kit's evidence makes that clear.
✅Quick check
What makes a persona useful?
Show the answer
It comes from research and describes goals, situations and obstacles that the team can design for.
What is a proto-persona?
Show the answer
A persona written from assumptions before research, to be replaced by evidence.