Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age

by Roman Pichler

A Persona Template To help you create your persona descriptions, I have developed a simple but powerful template that you can download from my website. The persona template consists of three sections: a picture and a name, the details, and the goal of the persona, as Figure 19 shows. Unlike traditional persona descriptions, which are fully fledged, detail-rich user models, my template encourages you to start with simple, provisional personas that capture the essence of the character. FIGURE 19: A Persona Template The section on the left of the template in Figure 19 captures the picture and the name of the persona. This makes it easier to develop empathy for the character and to refer to it. The latter comes in handy when you design the product and create scenarios, user stories, and other artifacts. I like to reuse the persona names in my user stories, for instance. The middle section lists the relevant characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of the persona. This can include demographics, job-related information, and hobbies. Don’t make the mistake of listing everything that might be relevant, but focus on the details that are important in order to understand the persona. If a demographic attribute such as age or job role is not helpful, for example, then leave it out. Don’t clutter your persona descriptions, and make sure that they are easy to understand. As a rule of thumb, your persona description should fit onto an A4 sheet of paper. The section on the right states t...