Centering User Voices: The Use of Rigorous Data Methods to Inform Beneficiary Persona Development in Formative Research

Abstract Information: User personas are a tool to build empathy and help decision-makers break away from assumptions to design better programs. Personas tell anonymized, aggregated stories of individual archetypes. In this session, we will guide participants through a novel approach to user persona development, which combines the best of rigorous data methods with the power of human-centered design thinking. Presenters will demonstrate how focus groups and interviews, coded through traditional qualitative analysis methods, can be leveraged to create personas grounded in evidence. Presenters will share multiple examples of how user personas have been employed in a range of settings – from Fortune 500 board rooms to global nonprofits – to inform more effective program and intervention design, and will invite participants to brainstorm use cases for personas in various types and stages of evaluation. Presenters will describe approaches employed to gather data, code and analyze results, engage multiple perspectives in sense-making, and construct personas. Participants will have the opportunity to practice collaborative, mixed methods sense-making of data, demonstrating how more robust data methods can help drive program design that goes beyond stereotypes and assumptions to uncover unique insights. Presenters will share a several examples of user personas to encourage participants’ imaginations and will invite participants to collaboratively construct their own personas that best communicate the core data insights that emerge through their analysis.