Why user Personas are very powerful tool for describing your target market and your product?

Before building any product, it is very important that we built personas of our potential users. Normally the developers and product managers just assume the average data available in public domain and it may lead to distorted result and further lead to building features which may not be even necessary for the users.

Personas help to ensure that everyone in your team who's involved with the product is aligned on the same customer. At the end of the day, personas help people on the product and technology team to make decisions about which features are important and about how to design the user experience.

When I was building Edmojo Platform (https://www.financepeer.com/edmojo), below is one of the examples of user profiling I did. I collected nearly 120 profiles of faculties before starting to build the product which took me nearly 3 months. And it really helped me to relate to my users and bring most important features in the product. And with iterations post first release for nearly 2 years we were able to reach more stable platform which was well accepted by our clients.

What Info Should a Persona Provide?

Good personas convey the relevant demographic, psychographic, behavioural, and needs-based attributes of your target customer. Personas should fit on a single page and provide a snapshot of the customer archetype that's quick to digest, and usually include the following information:

· Name

· Representative photograph

· Quote that conveys what they most care about

· Job title

· Demographics

· Needs/goals

· Relevant motivations and attitudes

· Related tasks and behaviours

· Frustrations/pain points with current solution

· Level of expertise/knowledge (in the relevant domain, e.g., level of computer savvy)

· Product usage context/environment (e.g., laptop in a loud, busy office or tablet on the couch at home)

· Technology adoption life cycle segment (for your product category)

· Any other salient attributes.

The two things on this list that really bring a persona to life are the photograph of the person and the quote expressing what's most important to them. Your team members will usually remember the name, photograph, and quote the most, especially when they are not looking at persona.