The persona canvas can be used to give a customer segment a face and name and make it easier to step into the shoes of the customer. Personas make talking about customers and their characteristics more tangible and concrete, and make it easier to refer back to a pattern of characteristics. Personas make it possible to create and share mental models and have a common language about several customer types.

HOW TO USE THE PERSONA CANVAS

If you have ever worked with design or designers, chances are that you have seen multiple varieties of personas being used to get a grip on who a customer or user is. This canvas helps you to build your own personas.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE

1 BEFORE YOU START

Arrange for a comfortable environment. Definitely not a meeting room. Create a creative athmosphere and have plenty of colorful materials and magazines at the ready.

TIP! START BY DEFINING NAME, AGE, GENDER, ROLE AND OTHER OUTWARD CHARACTERISTICS, AND DRAW THE IMAGE OF THE PERSONA. THIS WILL HELP YOU GENERATE MORE INFORMATION.

CHECKLIST

• ARRANGE A RELAXED, POSITIVE AND PRIVATE ENVIRONMENT
• HAVE MARKERS (FINE TIP) AND PAPER FOR EVERYBODY
• PRINT OR DRAW THE CANVAS ON A BIG SHEET OF PAPER
• HAVE PLENTY OF STICKY NOTES AND MARKERS READY
• ALLOW YOURSELF 45 MINUTES OF UNDISTURBED TIME

2 FILL OUT THE PERSONA
Fill out the persona with your team. Try to come up with things that your persona experiences, and discuss what they might feel about the experience. What will their response be? The persona works very well with the customer journey canvas in that way. Try to be specific, and selective.

3 HACKS: MORE USES FOR THE PERSONA CANVAS
The persona canvas helps you focus more on the mental model you have of a person or group of people – the picture of the persona that you share as a team. Making it visual makes sure everyone has the same picture. And you can use it to create a mental model or profile of ANY person or group!

And when you know that, it is clear that persona’s can be used for many more things that are now left to chance or long discussions.

EXAMPLE THREE EXAMPLES OF HOW TO USE THE PERSONA CANVAS
4 HACK: USE THE PERSONA CANVAS TO PREPARE FOR A MEETING
Prepare your next meeting by mapping out the personas for the important stakeholders. What are their hopes, their fears? Why are they in the discussion? What are they like? You could spend time before the meeting to figure out if your assumptions are correct, talking to others or the stakeholders themselves. During the meeting, make sure to take notes and update your map afterward.

5 HACK: USE THE PERSONA CANVAS FOR STORYTELLING
When you are creating a story you can use the template to map your audience(s) and what their perspective is. Why would they want to hear your story?

6 HACK: USE THE PERSONA CANVAS TO BUILD YOUR TEAM
Get to know your team! Have the people in your team make personas of themselves and the others in the team, and compare them. Ask for at least one surprising element to go beyond the businesscard level.

7 CHECK YOUR PERSONA
CHECKLIST
DO YOU HAVE A ROLE AND NAME FOR YOUR PERSONA?

• DID YOU CREATE A RICH PICTURE?
• HOW MUCH OF WHAT IS ON THE CANVAS IS STILL AN ASSUMPTION?
• WHAT IS THE ‘CORE’ OF YOUR PERSONA? WHAT DO THEY NEED?

8 NEXT STEPS
Once you filled your persona, it’s time for the next step. If you started from scratch, to get your first assumptions on paper, it’s now the time to go out and find evidence that your persona actually connects to real-world people.

Source : Designabetterbusiness.tools