Creating positive change through your charitable mission requires a deep understanding of the people you aim to support. Personas, when backed up by research from your users, turn your existing insights and data into relatable narratives that can promote empathy, increase awareness of your different users, inform design and communication decisions, and support your overall strategy.  

What are personas? 

Personas are fictional but detailed and representative ‘profiles’ of your users created to bring to life their characteristics, needs, and behaviours. A persona, typically a one-page document depicting a single person, but that person is not a real individual, it is created from observations of many people. It provides a human-like snapshot of relevant and meaningful commonalities in your user groups, based on user research. 

Personas have been around since the 1990’s and have typically been used for marketing purposes, created using surface-level demographics and characteristics, however personas can be much more than that. A good persona is needs-based and delves into the behavioural and emotional aspects of user experiences. They prioritise understanding users’ goals, challenges, motivations, and values, establishing a better connection between your charity and your audiences. 

In our handy template, you’ll find a simple example of what a persona looks like, as well as a blank template that will get you started with creating your own. 

What can personas be used for? 

Personas are versatile tools that have lots of practical applications, some of which include: 

• Empathy building: share the personas across your team and with stakeholders to foster a shared understanding of users. This not only encourages empathy but also ensures that everyone within your charity is aligned with your donors’ and beneficiaries’ perspectives
• Decision guidance: personas act as guiding lights for decisions, both in relation to website design and to your overall charitable services. When faced with choices, refer back to personas to ensure that decisions align with users’ essential needs and motivations. This avoids self-referential, biased or presumptive decision-making
• Feature prioritisation: prioritise website and user journey features based on the personas’ identified goals and challenges. This helps focus any changes and updates towards the most critical aspects of users’ experiences
• Content and communications direction: by having reference points for each of your user types, you can align your messaging with the emotional or motivational needs the personas highlight. This ensures a consistent and relatable brand narrative that speaks in your users’ language, focusing on their core needs
• Research scenarios: use the personas to come up with realistic scenarios to ask your research participants about. By reflecting the personas’ goals and challenges in your research questions, you ensure that your testing feels natural to them, meaning that your findings accurately reflect real-world experiences and expectations
• Continuous growth: as your charity develops, revisit and update your personas. User needs and behaviours can change, and aligning with these shifts ensures your support and services remain relevant and always have your user at the heart

 Creating needs-based personas 

Try to avoid spending too much time on the “best way” to make a persona document and lose sight of the bigger picture, which is to fully understand a user and then simply share the top-level information with others. 

Creating personas: 

1. User research: personas must always be based on evidence and it’s best if this evidence comes from speaking to and observing real users. There are lots of ways to gather information about your users – surveys, interviews, analytics and many more. Conduct in-depth research to understand users’ values, goals, challenges, and motivations
2. Data analysis: analyse the collected data to identify patterns and commonalities. Look beyond demographics and focus on the emotional drivers behind user behaviour. Split your audiences into key groups based on their preferences, challenges and motivations
3. Persona development: use a template such as our charity persona template to develop a visual representation of each audience group – a persona. Give each persona a title and a comprehensive set of characteristics
4. Incorporate personas: incorporate the personas into your marketing, service development, and customer service strategies. When making decisions, consider how each persona would react or benefit from the choices you make. This will help you tailor your efforts to meet their specific needs and preferences

Personas are not static documents but dynamic tools that should be refreshed periodically so that they continue to add value by informing, guiding, and aligning various aspects of your charity to your users’ needs and behaviours.  

Conclusion 

In conclusion, needs-based user research personas offer a visual approach to understanding and empathising with your users by centring on their fundamental needs and motivations. By consolidating your research insights and data in this way to understand the nuances of user experiences more deeply, you can provide support and service that resonate with users on a profound and personal level. Create and communicate needs-based personas to help you provide authentic, user-centred experiences that stand out.