How to Create User Personas Using Generative AI Tools?

As a marketing strategist and user researcher, over the past few months, I have been curious about how to create user personas using generative AI tools.

I found that working with an AI didn't help me do less work, but it helped me achieve better results. The way to do this is by adding our human abilities on top of the AI response. Don't make the mistake of thinking of AI in the same way as a search engine, where you put a query and boom, your results are ready to use. With AI, you need to refine your request to get closer to what you are looking for.

These are my findings:

a) Get advice from (virtual) experts:

Researchers often have a hard time trying to interview industry experts. Imagine if you could spend a few minutes with the smartest people in the world on any subject you want. These could be fantastic business thinkers, scientists, or artists. They could even be people from the past who are no longer with us.?

Picture what they could do to push your thinking in different directions. Well, now you can spend time with virtual versions of these people using ChatGPT. The key is not to look for just one answer. Have a conversation. Chat. This allows us to gain all kinds of amazing information and insights. And as researchers, our job is to think from as many points of view as possible because the more you can do that, the more chance you have of coming up with amazing ideas in the end.

b) Understand your audience:

One of the most important things to do when creating user personas is to understand their behaviour. So, first, you can request a table of potential audiences for product X, with their profession, age, and why they need the product. You can then ask for a short bio to be included, including their goals, needs and wants, pain points, motivations, and who is most influential. And there you go. Remember, this is not your bottom line, it's just a way to challenge and increase your own thinking.

c) Filter and discuss:

So are we done and should we make our business decisions based on this? Absolutely not. You now have these new complementary pieces of valuable information to add to your user persona. Of course, you need to validate and test everything with real users and get stakeholders into the room to engage them in the process.

The good news is that we have now considered aspects that we might not have written right away from our first thoughts in just a few minutes. We have not worked less but definitely saved time and money.

Therefore, using generative AI for user research will help us to have more robust thinking. The point is that we can use it to help us analyze things in different ways. And by looking at things from other perspectives, we'll come up with ideas that we wouldn't normally come up with. But after all, we will still need to apply our judgment, experience, and skills to challenge the result in order to enhance our work.