Product Personas — the art of understanding your users

Establishing a Product-Market Fit (PMF)

When Juicero was launched in 2016, it was pushed as the first-ever, at-home cold-pressed juicing system. All users had to do was put a pre-packaged mix into Juicero and press a button. However, at $699 the price seemed a bit steep for the average Joe. And when a Bloomberg report showed that users could potentially squeeze the 99-cent premix into a cup with their hands without having to shell out $699 on Juicero, the perceived uselessness of the product became more apparent. The company reduced the price to $399 in a matter of months but that too didn’t help. The product was soon taken off the shelves across America and all buyers were issued refunds.

In 2018, Meta (then called just Facebook) released Portal — a “smart display communication device”. Pitched as a video communication device that would “dramatically change the way people keep in touch”, the device was met with hostile reactions since the moment it was launched. Progressive reductions on an originally steep price didn’t make a difference. Nor did the thought of a video-capturing device from an entity embroiled in the infamous Cambridge Analytica Scandal at that time seem a good proposition for potential buyers.

Facebook Portal and Juicero can be safely dubbed as failed products. The question arises — why did they fail? The answer lies in failing to have achieved a Product-Market Fit (PMF).

To put it simply — Product-Market Fit is whether your product is sought after or not. As someone who is building a product, you are building it for a cohort or an audience facing a specific problem that is a) not addressed at all or b) under-addressed.

If your product solves these problems better than an existing solution, you can claim to have achieved a product-market fit; if it doesn’t or does it marginally (or slightly worse than a solution that already exists), the PMF is not there and the product will be called a failed product — just like Portal and Juicero above.

Who are you building your product for?

This is the most important question to ask yourself when you start ideating your product ideas. Who are you building your product for? You have got to be building it for someone right? Because if you are not, then your product will be rather useless :) This is where Product Personas come into play.

Product Personas can be best described as the traits, behaviors or characteristics that come together and create the profile of a product’s typical consumer or customer.

Product Personas give teams the much-needed clarity to become customer-focused and concentrate their energies on solving problems or building products that will make the lives of their customers or consumers significantly better.

The most fundamental building block of any successful product is for teams to develop a thorough understanding of their consumer personas — who they are, what do they do, where do they work, what do they earn, what challenges do they face, how do they spend, what are their expectations, what drives them, etc.

What are Personas?

Each product will have a typical or an ideal user. Personas are fictitious archetypes that reflect the characteristics, values, behaviors, and traits of the typical user. It is common for a product to have multiple product personas. These personas enable teams to align on the product features that can help make the product palatable to their users when it is finally launched. It also helps teams zero in on options that would make the product experience much more desirable and sticky for prospective users.

While some specific details about behavior vary based on the product in question, personas typically almost always include:

• Name, Age, Location
• Hobbies/ What they typically do in their spare time
• Their aspirations and goals
• Challenges faced by them and how they are tackling the same now
• Their fears or anxieties
• Their perception of your product (in case they have already used it)
• What should your product offer to make their lives easier/ help them navigate the issues faced by them

There is no right or wrong way to create a persona — the type of template you choose depends completely on the type of brand/ personality your product represents or the design that your internal team relates the most to. There are also hundreds of ready-to-use templates on Canva and Figma (like the above example) that PMs can use to come up with personas.

But more importantly, these personas should help bring in more cross-functional collaboration and guide the decisions at different levels — UI/ UX, user onboarding, features, journeys inside the product, pricing, nudges, etc. all of which will lead to a better experience for the users.

An important distinction to be made a note of — for some products Buyer Personas may be completely different from User or Product Personas. While User or Product Personas (which are often used interchangeably) reflect the characteristics and traits of users who use or consume the product; the Buyer Persona (particularly in B2B businesses) reflects traits of users who take the calls to buy a product that is ultimately not consumed/ used by them but by a group of users for whom the decision has been made.

Steps to Create Personas

1. Gather Data: Start gathering as much data as possible — that is technically the first step towards getting your personas on point. Collect data using surveys, set up calls with prospective users, do market research, etc. This data will help you understand your users better — their demographics, their aspirations, their challenges, etc. In a lot of cases (especially if you have an existing business), you will already have lots of data — including website/ app usage patterns, user details, customer tickets, etc. — these too will give you a set of super-useful insights.
2. Analyze the collected data: Look for patterns and similarities and start segmenting your users. It is always useful to start segmenting by a) demographics and b) usage- while the former will have segments getting created based on age, location, gender, etc. the latter will be based on how users are planning to/ already using your product.
3. Create your Personas: The most exciting part! Head to Canva/ Figma, get a template and start creating personas. While the first 2 steps, if done correctly, will ensure that your personas are well-researched, do ensure that you keep the information concise and put in only the most relevant content under each trait. Once the basic persona (say based on demographics) is created, ensure that you add additional layers to create categories within personas — driven primarily by behaviors, motivations, goals, etc. Ensure that the created personas are as personalized and as accurate as possible. Create at least one persona for each of your user groups (so that you can think and plan broader) but please ensure that you don’t overdo it and create hundreds of personas!
4. Keep updating your Personas: The process doesn’t just stop at the point of creation of personas — user demographics change, behaviors change, and usage patterns change. Ensure that you are adding new personas or updating the existing ones are regular intervals — this will not only ensure that feature changes that you make in your product/ additional enhancements that you bring in continue adding value to your users but also if you decide to pivot to a new model/ launch a new product altogether, you will be doing so in a more informed manner.

User personas help you convey a powerful idea — a story of what your product will do for your users, how will it change their lives, and how your users will be coming back time and again to your product. It is this story that will ensure that all relevant stakeholders are on the same page and build something that solves a pressing problem for your users and achieves a Product-Market Fit.