Creating Value with Proto-Research Persona Development

Abstract

To stay competitive in marketplace, companies have to design compelling products that are successfully adopted by their intended users. To achieve this goal, companies must establish and validate a shared understanding of their customer base. In this paper we propose a persona development process for creating value in an organization. This process, which can be conducted relatively quickly and cost-effectively, provides a roadmap for continual assessment of organizational understanding of customer base. It creates value for companies by allowing them (1) to build consensus internally around their customers’ needs, goals, and preferences, and (2) to validate/test the accuracy of the assumptions they make about their customers. We tested this process in a fortune 500 company. Our results suggest that our process is both effective and efficient in establishing a shared understanding of the customer base and in testing the accuracy of assumptions made by organizations about their customers.