There are so many different types of personas, it can sometimes make your head spin. And, oftentimes, people don’t generally like any of them. When describing personas, people use “useless,” “confusing,” “stupid,” and many other negative words. I have had people tell me to use them and others who tell me to avoid them…and, like most, people who throw their hands in the air, unsure of what to do.
Regardless, I have a soft spot for personas. I truly believe, with the right lens and mindset, they are a great tool to be used for innovation and decision-making. Personas are fictional characters that embody the typical characteristics of different user groups. See here: they are a fictional embodiment. We have forgotten that personas are a tool to be used, not the answer to all of our questions, or the solution to all of our problems.
The reason I create personas is to help my teammates understand the story and the relevant context of our users. I’m not just trying to shove as much information as possible on to an A4 poster. I want to help my team make decisions with the information I give them. I believe, if we are mindful of how we use them, they can be excellent tools that can help guide teams towards better decision-making and innovation
First off, let’s start off with a small explanation of Jobs To Be Done:
Jobs To Be Done encompasses the concept that users are trying to get something done, and that they “hire” certain products or services in order to make progress towards accomplishing goals. Usually, we all want to be better than we are in a given moment. We all have goals that lead us closer to our ideal self. So, we will look for, and purchase, certain products or services when our current reality does not match what we want for the future.
With Jobs To Be Done, we are completely solution-agnostic. We aren’t even thinking about our product or any products in general. We are focused solely on people’s motivations and how they act. We try to identify their anxieties and the deeper reasons of why they act the way they do, and why they respond in certain ways.
For instance, if we have a travel product that allows people to buy all types of travel tickets online (bus, car, plane, scooter, you name it), we focus our research on how people are using this website/app and how they buy tickets online. However, when you think about it, people didn’t buy tickets online in the past, so this kind of platform didn’t exist back then. And in ten years, there will probably be a new way to buy tickets we don’t even know about yet.
The point is, people still need to travel for various reasons. That job remained stable throughout the years, and the solutions created for it have changed. People will use different products that allow them to get their job done in a faster, better way.
So, if you are just focused on the best ticket buying experience, you will be relevant for some time, but, eventually, competitors will overtake you. Instead, we need to focus on the job people are trying to accomplish: getting from one place to another in the fastest and easiest way possible.