This is a very quick overview of how I create initial personas, validate them over time and use them in my UX methodology.

1. UX Personas
How I’ve made & used
personas over the past
seven years
Stephen Morrissey, UX Unicorn Wannabe

2. Overview
● 30,000 ft overview of me
● Your first draft and an internal audit
● Further validation and an external review
● Using personas

3. How to get that first draft

4. First draft: It’s OK to guess
● Your internal resources
○ Customer support
○ Technical support
○ Product managers
○ Other marketing & UX research
● Your first guess
○ Job vs. behavioral personas
○ How many personas make sense
○ How much detail do I need
● Strategy gut check
○ What is your company’s strategy, and who is your C-Level going after
● What are your best first draft experiences?

5. Further validation

6. Further validation: It’s not just a pile of BS
● Customer interviews & focus groups are super helpful
● Email surveys are a good substitute
● Personal connections matter too!
● Dig down as quickly as possible to the root problems
○ Ultimately, ask about the tasks they are trying to accomplish and the problems they encounter
along the way
○ How long do they allocate to accomplish said tasks
● What are the ”other things” they deal with
○ What external struggles to they experience
○ How often are they interrupted
● What are your biggest 180 or revelation?

7. How to use your personas

8. Best ways to use your personas
● Wireframes!
○ Every page is made up of components, and you can add suggested personas for different pages
○ Add personas to every components in your library to help with “everyone” pages
● Marketing “stuff”
○ Email segments
○ Social media segments
● Design Decisions
○ Based on strategy, one persona may mean more than another, so components may move up &
down the screen and/or size based on that

9. Questions?