{"id":69,"date":"2019-02-02T10:53:40","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T07:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persona.qcri.org\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2022-10-05T05:24:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T02:24:54","slug":"how-to-create-personas-a-list-of-common-interview-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/persona.qcri.org\/blog\/how-to-create-personas-a-list-of-common-interview-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create Personas? A List of Common Interview Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creating Personas from Data<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At Qatar Computing Research Institute, our persona team<\/a> has developed a system for automatic persona generation<\/a> (APG). The demo of this persona system is available online, and we have also posted about the various benefits of data-driven personas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a part of our persona research<\/a>, we are interested in the information needs<\/em> of persona end users. This means that professionals working in different domains want to have specific information in persona profiles.\u00a0 For example, journalists want to know what type of news topics the persona consumes, while online marketers want to know what products the personas is likely to buy.<\/p>\n

Although our approach of automatic persona generation<\/a> is based on automation and various computational techniques of persona development<\/a>, we have reviewed a lot of blog posts and research articles relating to interviewing users or customers in order to create persona profiles.<\/p>\n

This brief post shares some of the key insights we\u2019ve found.<\/p>\n

End Users’ Information Needs Define Persona Content<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Personas are fictive people profiles based on real data about the underlying audience, user or customer base. The purpose of personas is to make the users behavior more easily understandable than when analyzing numbers and graphs (i.e., “faceless” target group information).<\/p>\n

In general, when creating personas, there is a need for two types of information:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Information needs of persona users:<\/strong>\u00a0this means what information people inside our organization\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0to know<\/li>\n
  2. Actual user information:<\/strong> this means what information we\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0know about the users or customers<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Persona Information Needs Questionnaire<\/h2>\n

    For the former, we have developed a\u00a0Persona Information Needs Questionnaire.<\/em>\u00a0This simple questionnaire intends to clarify what information decision makers want in the persona profiles. It contains eight questions that are targeted to end users of personas:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. What are your general job objectives?<\/li>\n
    2. What kind of customer- or user-related decisions you make?<\/li>\n
    3. What kind of customer or user information do you need?<\/li>\n
    4. What analytics information are you currently using?<\/li>\n
    5. What kind of customer- or user-related questions are currently not answered using the available data?<\/li>\n
    6. How would you use personas in your own work?<\/li>\n
    7. What information you find useful in a persona profile?<\/li>\n
    8. (OPTIONAL: What information is missing from the shown persona profile?)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The purpose of these questions is to discover the persona user’s professional persona information needs. Knowing these needs is useful for creation of data-driven personas<\/a>, e.g., automatic persona generation<\/a>, but also extends to qualitative persona creation.<\/p>\n

      Interview Questions for Users or Customers that the Personas Represent<\/h2>\n

      In the following, we summarize some questions that are intended for the actual users or customers of an organization creating the persona profiles.<\/p>\n

      First, “Nisha” (2013) writes about the differences of customer profiling and persona creation<\/a>, and presents the following questions:<\/p>\n

      \u201cQuestions for B2B marketers to delve into while creating buyer personas include:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n