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Tool

Persona – Understanding Our Partners

In the field of product and process design, a Persona is an archetypal character that represents a group of possible users. It is used to summarise findings on their goals, attitudes/behaviours, capacities, and knowledge. This method can be adapted to your localisation process. It is helpful in making your participants aware of the characteristics of the involved actors and possible ways of interaction. 

Goal

Analysis / comprehensive understanding of any specific stakeholders on any selected SDG, with the aim of supporting municipalities to better understand how to approach that particular organisation/stakeholder for cooperation, partnership and collaboration.

Tasks

Step 1: Based on the stakeholder analysis performed previously, you can identify the most important stakeholders for whom you and your team want to perform the persona analysis.   

Step 2: Decide about the main categories you want to analyse. Not everything is important and not all information is easy to find, so, think from the perspective of what would you need to know in order to improve cooperation with that stakeholder.  

  • Interesting categories to think about: specific responsibilities, personality, motivations and frustrations, different kinds of knowledge and experiences, to name a few   

 Step 3: Form smaller groups and collect data through questionnaires, interviews, desktop research, and your available knowledge / information.  

 Step 4: Use the given template (or any other format you prefer to prepare) and visualise the information gathered. 

 Other categories could include: 

  • Name 
  • Demographics (such as gender, age, location, qualifications, occupation, income, marital status, and kids) 
  • Goals/needs 
  • Values 
  • Information sources (such as books, podcasts, news sites, blogs, TV, radio, thought leaders, and social media channels) 
  • Technology (including devices, browsers, and software/apps) 
  • Pain points, fears, and objections 
  • Personality traits 
  • Skills and tools 
  • Quote (a sentence or two in their own words that captures their thoughts or position, ideally a survey answer or quote from interviewing one of your customers) 

  

Materials

Persona Template (printed or digital) 

Note

This analysis can also be nicely co-created and visualized on a virtual whiteboard.  

Timeframe

1 to 2 hours, depending on the number of personas and the detail of the analysis

Output

Findings from this exercise will support municipalities in learning how to approach that particular organisation/stakeholder for cooperation, partnership and collaboration.

References

Design Method Toolkit, Digital Society School, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences