Persona-and-Scenario Development

Create a clear image of your target users by looking into their living and workings styles; and develop a scenario to describe their behavior when using a certain product. This is called Persona-and-Scenario method to design user behavior, one of the human-centered design methodologies used for designing websites, marketing communication schemes, and user experience that your brand brings.

Using the Persona-and-Scenario method, first we detail the behavior of target users of your website and marketing strategies from their perspective. Based on this, we create a scenario of user behavior that tells you what kind of communications your users need; when and under what situations they may feel such need; and which tool you should use and how you should interact with them. This scenario is expected to be the first sketch for your website and the first blueprint for your marketing strategies.

We create a user persona for your website (or your marketing strategies) based on the data collected from user surveys, as well as a behavior scenario based on the target users' behavior on your website (or an interaction scenario between the users and your marketing communication tools).

The Persona-and-Scenario method was developed by Alan Cooper, who is widely known as the “Father of Visual Basic”. He believed that it was essential to have empathy with users in product design, and used a persona in the process of product development of Visual BASIC. The Persona-and-Scenario method is a design technique for developing a product that users really wish to use. A user persona and its behavior scenario will give a website designer a much clearer picture of users and their behavior, going beyond the obscure profile of “customer” and “user”.

A persona is a fictitious person created based on the specific data collected from real people, not by the prejudiced impression of developers and marketers. A persona helps website project members to concentrate on explicit design goals such as user needs and user experience. Furthermore, the goals, needs, anticipations, and problems of the products and website that are described in the persona can lead project members in the right direction of the project.

We first identify problems and issues on your website as well as challenges for your business and marketing, in order to design user behavior using the Persona-and-Scenario method. After defining the competitive environment of the market, trends of competitors, and the direction of your strategy, we move into investigating the needs and usage conditions of target users.

We investigate the needs of your target users, current status of the existing website, and usage trends of your products. To do this, we use various user data collected from user behavior questionnaires; user interviews by Contextual Inquiry (a fieldwork approach); user feedback and claims sent to your company; access log analysis data on your website; publicized user survey data; and secondary data on user feedback obtained from sales representatives.

We classify the collected user data into certain categories according to key characteristics by using a KJ method. Based on the categories, we create bulleted persona skeletons (a list of user characteristics), which are prioritized by the frequency of use, market scale, purchasing power, strategic importance, etc., in order to prepare for a complete persona.

Based on the prioritized skeletons, we create a main persona that is the highest priority target user as well as two or three sub-personae. Then we prepare basic persona documents by selecting necessary elements from the categories of name, picture, age, gender, company name, occupation, purpose, skills and knowledge, usage environment, values, personality and so on.

Based on the basic persona documents, we create a scenario of user behavior that describes in what situations the persona use your website, and when, where and why the persona comes to know and interact with your marketing communications. The scenario will give you a clearer picture of users' needs; for example, what kind of functions they need and where and how they want to use such functions; and how and what kind of interactions they need. In this way, the scenario serves as a preliminary design of your website and marketing communications, and helps you define user requirements.