Personas, Provisional Personas, and Jobs To Be Done

[lindsayboylan]

What

Personas, provisional personas, and Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) are representations of a type of end-user.

Personas

Personas summarize what we know about a user, highlighting pain points, behavioral characteristics, and potential opportunity areas. Personas are backed in full research studies.

Provisional Personas

Provisional personas are different from typical personas in that they represent stakeholders' or management's representation of what the end-user is. They are a "best guess" as to describing and understand who your end-users are. Provisional personas are not backed in full research studies.

JTBD

JTBD is a framework that outlines the "job" that users can/will "hire" your product to do. We can use this to identify a set of jobs that align to user needs.

Why

We create these to understand who we are building for.

Personas

Personas are helpful in generalizing our user base and serve as a "true north" when referencing who we're really building for. They're helpful to come back to when it feels like we are off-track with our direction.

Provisional Personas

These are helpful in understanding what you know and don't know about your end-users.

JTBD

JTBD focuses on outcomes rather than features. It allows teams to focus on user needs as opposed to user characteristics. JTBD can work well paired with personas but neither is a replacement for the other.

When

Personas

Early in the generative/discovery process, when we have time to commit to full rounds of interviews, diary studies, ethnographic research, etc.

Provisional Personas

Early in the generative/discovery process. To understand what management's vision of our end-users is and where the gaps are.

JTBD

Early in the generative/discovery process. Must be backed by interviews, diary studies, ethnographic research, etc. JTBD is helpful when you already understand your user base but want to uncover past, current, and future problems and opportunity areas. For example, we used jobs to be done to identify user needs for a mobile experience. We know our user base and heard them asking for a mobile app, but we weren't sure if that would directly address their true need. "Jobs" and their user needs are solution-agnostic.

How

Personas

1. Write down questions you have around gaps in your knowledge on your end-users.
2. Identify goals
3. Conduct interviews, ethnographic studies, diary studies, etc. to gather insights and answers to your questions
4. Identify common patterns
5. Create persona (common items to include: name, description, motivations, goals, frustrations, preferences, etc)

Provisional Personas

A brainstorm with stakeholders can do the following activities:

1. Identification / segmentation
2. Attribute profiling
3. Identify traits, on a spectrum (for ex: does X activity infrequently or often)
4. Finalize persona

JTBD

1. Write down questions you have around gaps in your knowledge on your end-users.
2. Identify goals
3. Conduct interviews, ethnographic studies, diary studies, etc. to gather insights and answers to your questions
4. Identify common jobs end users are trying to get done
5. Categorize jobs to be done - main and related jobs
6. Identify the functional, emotional, personal, and social aspects of each job
7. Use as a tool to solve for user needs/jobs

Pro Tips

Helpful Reads

Personas

• How To Create Powerful Personas
• The Power and Problems of Provisional Personas

Provisional Personas

• Provisional Persona Workshop Slides

JTBD

• Personas vs JTBD, NNG
• 8 Things To User In JTBD Framework