Tamara Adlin talks about how a site can improve their customer experience. The main thing she points out is that you shouldn’t think in terms of “users” or “customers”, but instead what she calls personas. Personas are basically an imaginary person of a certain sex, age, income, etc. Adlin proposes that personas give a much clearer picture of what is needed to improve customer experience. She makes a good example, instead of having a segment, like 35- to 45-year-old women who live in the suburbs, you have the persona Maryanne. Maryanne is 37, lives in Bellevue, has two kids and not allot of time for shopping, etc.
I definitely see her point, and agree that personas probably is a better way to approach the issue. However, I see a risk of getting too focused. If you dig down too low you might end up with a service that is perfect for Maryanne, but at the same time is completely horrible for anyone who doesn’t fit the very narrow persona that is Maryanne. Also, if you want to make a service for more than one persona, you will probably have allot of trouble satisfying everyone without some more general view. I feel that it’s still viable to think in broader terms as users and customers but in combination with the personas.
Adlin also talks allot about the importance that everyone in the company has a very clear picture of who their customers are. Her style for making this happen is by starting at the top, with the shareholders, executives and other influential personnel. This way all directives going down will already be focused on the target.
I can’t do anything else than agree on this point. When you are selling a product or a service, the most important thing is to know who is going to buy it. If you fail at this point, your company will most likely not exist for very long. So everyone working inside the company needs to be very clear about who your buyer is. If for example the CEO has one perception of whom the buyer is and then sends down directives to a lower level manager who has another perception, well anyone can understand that this will cause problems.
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4 comments:
Hi, Patrik. I agree your point that the persona could end up too narrow description. Probably, a balance between uses statistics and 'persona' should be carefully used and leveraged.
I largely agree with what you're saying, Patrik, but I do think that having several personas in mind when designing the product or service will make sure that the target audience is not too narrowly defined without complicating the design process.
A cool example regarding personas down the ladder in companies I heard of in an interaction class I took back in Sweden was that a company had actually created real-life size paper "dolls" of their personas and placed them around the office. I guess if you meet Maryanne everytime you leave your desk you eventually get to know her pretty well.
Persona can provide certain information of each person but use this date is pretty dangerous for deciding the propensity of consummer. I think that sometime the firm should lead customer to follow their needs. Persona should refer to analyze for customer's disposition.
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