Data-driven Persona Development

by Jennifer (Jen) McGinn, Nalini Kotamraju

Authors propose a re-ordering of the traditional persona development process steps. Instead of

1. collect existing data
2. perform field studies
3. draft persona
4. validate persona with a user survey

they decided to

1. gather desired persona attributes from stakeholders
2. perform a survey of the targeted user segment(s)
3. conduct factor analysis
4. conduct individual interviews with members of each group to adjust groupings

They found it faster and cheaper than traditional deep method of persona creation, which takes months or years.

This makes much more sense because it front-loads the requirement-gathering portion, thereby informing the design portion.