This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
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Personas help develop insight into your audience
One of the tools we sometimes use to help understand users is a thing called a persona.
Now this is not something that you’ll use all the time, but I’ll mention it now. Maybe you just stick it in your back pocket and you use this tool or this approach whenever you find it useful.
What we do is we make up a story about a typical user describing their attributes, and some of their attitudes. And then we’re able to write for that person.
Let me show you an example – that might be easier than me talking through the theory. Suppose I had to write a document for coffee shop owners. What I’d do is I’d make up a story about a typical coffee shop owner, so I might make up this story about Matt, who owns a small coffee shop franchise in suburban Sydney. He’s had the shop for 18 months after working in the industry for a few years. He understands the processes fairly well. Because he’s been taught by people he considers to be the best in the industry. Now his business is going OK, but he’s had a recent rise in his shop rent and that’s increased his costs. He’s borrowed $100,000 to establish the business and he wants to pay that back as soon as he possibly can. He’s got some good ideas, some innovative ideas he’d like to test in the. Market. Now Matt’s more streetwise than formally educated. He glances at information provided by the franchise, but he only reads articles in full when they really interest him. He’s aware of temperature control issues, but his experience with food at home suggests it’s not really that important.
Now of course I could go on and embellish that, that persona, but what I’ve got there, if it’s a good representation of a typical coffee shop owner, gives me some useful insights into how I need to craft this document.
Firstly, I see that he’s more streetwise and formally educated. I’m guessing he’s not really a reader and so that means that when I provide my document to him, it probably should be looking fairly attractive. It might have some graphics in there to engage him and it will be worded fairly simply.
I also see that he’s under some financial stress. If I’m going to suggest anything in my document that’s going to cost money, I need to be careful about how I approach that.
And if I wanted to talk about temperature control issues, temperature control of food, I can see his starting point there. And so that’s really helpful. If I’m going to have that conversation with him.
The power of a persona is that it does give us a better understanding of users because we’ve had to create that persona. So we’ve had to think a little bit in depth about what they are like and then it puts our users at the very centre of the design and writing process.
Easier to write for a real person
It simplifies our writing and design decisions because it’s much easier to design and write for a real person. So like I said, this is not something that you will use all the time, but it is a useful tool.
Many years ago, I was doing some work with the Tax Office, and they developed, I think it was a dozen different personas. And they created life size, cardboard cutouts of these people and put them around the office. So when we were writing, we could see these people. I could see Max the butcher over there. OK, I’m going to have a conversation with him. What would it be like?
So personas are a really powerful tool and you might choose to use those from time to time for some of your writing projects.
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