Creating personas is one of the most important processes in the early stages of design. Personas should be used at every user-facing startup before the product is even being mocked up. Personas help every aspect of a product-building business if done right. Below are five reasons to use personas and how they can help your business.

1. Personas identify your users

Personas help you sell to the right crowd. Well thought out personas act as mini-biographies for the hypothetical user. For example, a persona could tell you a person’s name, age, occupation, salary, and (important) what problems the user has that your product or service can solve. Knowing your users and how you can help them is an important part of building a great product.

2. Personas help you to not waste money

On a tight budget, you may not see the value in spending money on researching personas. I can tell you that setting aside a small amount of cash to spend on persona research will save you money in the long run. What if you aren’t reaching the right user base? What if your product would have done better with middle-aged mothers rather than college students? Well then good on you, you’re on track to build the next Facebook. In all seriousness though, if you are building a startup with little available money, there are cheaper options available. Proto-personas are done when there is little money or time available for true research. They are based on educated guesses from your team and secondary research. So if you’re still waiting on that call back from a16z, proto-personas are a perfect option for you.

3. Personas help your company to not get too broad

There is much to be said about this, but I believe someone else already said it best.

Widening your target doesn’t improve your aim. To create a product that must satisfy a broad audience of users, logic will tell you to make it as broad in its functionality as possible to accommodate the most people. Logic is wrong. When you design for your primary persona, you end up delighting your primary persona and satisfying your secondary persona(s). If you design for everyone, you delight no one. That is the recipe for a mediocre product. — Eeva Ilama, UX Designer at [24]7

4. Personas give the users a voice

Through the field of UX, the users have been given a voice. UX Designers/Product Designers/<insert current trendy name here> should harness personas to give the users a metaphorical megaphone. The users, after all, are what keep your company afloat. Formal meetings should be done with potential users to identify issues that your business could solve and user personas should be based off of these meetings. It’s good to have an opinion on what you think the characteristics of your users might be, but it’s better to actually have data proving what their characteristics are.

5. Personas help you to understand your product

Believe it or not, it’s not all about the users (gasp). Personas can actually help you understand your business/product better. If your product doesn’t appeal to your ideal demographic like you originally thought, it gives you a chance to either adapt to the new demographic or change your product to fit the intended demographic. This is another example of how using personas early on can help your business reach its full potential.

Thanks for reading!

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