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  2. What came first, the idea (what) or the "Persona" (who)?...

What came first, the idea (what) or the "Persona" (who)? The egg or the chicken?

Karen Sánchez
4 replies
I'm in an eternal debate, normally you have an idea and then you think about who to direct it to, but what if you first think about who to direct it to, know what idea to get? What do you think?

Replies

Michael Flux
Placing the 'idea' first, creates the 'solution in search of a problem'. When that is your starting point, unless you're extremely lucky, it will always be an uphill battle to find the perfect user for your idea. Whereas if you start from 'what problems are these people having' and you solve for that, not only do you create the solution in response to an actual problem rather than hoping that a problem exists, but from day one you already have people who are lining up to use your solution.
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Karen Sánchez
GETitOUT
@michaelflux You are right! Being so the advantage really is in Empathizing from the beginning. The implementation of Design Thinking is perfect for any process. 🤩 I'm curious, how do you do your "Personas" analysis?
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Michael Flux
@karen_sanchez21 So that's a bit of a difficult question as it so wildly depends on the type of product/service being built, and whether you mean personas analysis in the context of early stage research/ideation, marketing/sales, or building the product? I ask as all 3 are very different. e.g. you're making a physical product, a new dog dollar; The target market for that is very clear - dog owners. You can simply go to where that type of an audience gathers - dog parks, pet groomers, pet shops - and talk to them to understand their needs - how often do you buy a new collar, what are the most important things you look for in a collar, what is the maximum you would spend on a collar if it met all your needs etc. Then throughout the product development cycle you continue gathering feedback from the same types of audience (maybe even the same people) and by the time the product is ready to go for sale it's as optimised as it can reasonably get. But even then, your product goes on sale, sales are good, you're happy and you think there is plenty of happy pet owners using your product. You start doing asking customers for feedback and you realise that majority of your customers are buying the collars for BDSM purposes. -- If you're building a digital product such as an app/platform, wildly differers on the type of product you're building, and often your first assumption around who will be your target demographic will be completely wrong. You may start building building a dating app which targets college students, only to discover that the community among which the app is actually becoming popular is cheese enthusiasts who post about the different cheeses they have and then use your app to connect them with other people who like a similar cheese. -- What I'm getting at is that most of the time the first assumptions will be wrong, and the only data that really matters is what you collect on the people who have already become your customers as what people say they will do, rarely lines up with what they actually do.
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Karen Sánchez
GETitOUT
@michaelflux You are right, thanks for commenting. 💡 I suppose that to start from scratch, a fictional start is fine, but to advance it, it will be ideal to be based on real users or clients, as you mention, only real observation will be the truth. Media such as interviews, surveys, reviews, identifying the competition and what they do, these would be viable tactics for a good strategy. Excellent Turnout! 🤩
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