Archetypes and personas
Archetypes are based on user behaviours and are created from research interviews. They often describe a group within a segment. Not every groups has the same motivations that drives them to a website or product. What are their goals, why are they doing it and how are they achieving them are the questions that need to be answered when creating archetypes. A person could fall into a few different archetypes depending on the goal and the journey they are on. Archetypes are a great tool to define a user experience as well as prioritising product features.
Personas focus more on the individual experience. They include demographic information, education, interests, specific needs and pain points. They often focus on the characteristics of the target audience but don't include behavioural patterns. They help to make the product more relatable and are a useful tool for business decision makers. When real research data is missing proto- personas are made up to help create user stories. In this case there is a real risk that the end product is built on assumptions rather than real insights.
Below are some examples of archetypes and personas.
Personas created by workshop participants
Personas created for a flood project
Archetypes created for the website
Archetypes in the emergency management sector
Resilient National Operations personas
Empathy maps
Empathy maps are a useful tool when creating behavioural archetypes. The collected data from all research participants helps to group the behaviours and define the archetypes. They are used after conducting discovery interviews and are best populated after an interview while the memory of the participant is fresh in the mind.
Collecting empathy maps of all research participants and grouping them in the synthesising stage gives confidence that the created archetypes are based on solid user research.
Open studio/sprint demo
The research work is presented in either open studios, showcases or sprint demos. Before the lockdown office space was used to present the work in multiple ways. Artefacts on the wall space supported presentation slides on the screen. Since working from home all presentations have moved to online. It is a less immersive experience but it still works.
