Typically created in a workshop that involves your team and key stakeholders or clients. The workshop usually takes 2–4 hours; each participant creates 2–5 proto personas of their own (using a simple template) and then shares them with the group. The group then discusses all the personas and combines and edits various attributes into a final set of 3–6 proto personas.

How to make proto personas

Start by interviewing 5–30 users (as a rolling sample of 5 users per group, until you uncover only a few new insights with each new interview) to uncover the main things that your users care about. Take your transcripts and code the data (identity key themes). Then look for broad patterns: look for interviewees that had major overlap with other interviewees in most of these key themes.   

How to make qualitative personas

Conduct exploratory qualitative research to identify the main themes that come up repeatedly among users. Based on this qualitative data, create a survey to collect quantitative data about the major themes of interest at a larger scale. Survey at least 100 (ideally 500 or more) respondents. Then use a statistical clustering technique such as latent class analysis, factor analysis, or K-means clustering to find the patterns in your survey data. 

How to make statistical personas

- Proto personas: Quickly align the team’s existing assumptions about who their users are, but not based on (new) research
- Qualitative personas: Based on small-sample qualitative research, such as interviews,  usability tests, or field studies
- Statistical personas: Initial qualitative research informs a statistical analysis on a survey of a larger sample

University of Virginia, Charlottesville

- Quick, empathy-inducing shorthands for our users’ context, motivations, needs, and approaches to using our products
- Meant to help us focus on what matters most to our users
- Must always be rooted in qualitative understandings and reflect the what and why that drives user decisions
- Should not be based on correlations between different demographic or analytics variable
- Not exhaustive, they have to be memorable, actionable, and distinct from one another

What are personas?

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona-types/

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