Personas can help give an identity to the types of users we’re working for, and bring to life their needs and challenges. Talking about them collaboratively can help a team with different expertise develop a shared understanding of what they need to do.

Personas can provide a reference point as you work through the service design process, so that you can check back and ask whether the proposed solution really would meet the needs of the persona.

There are lots of ways to develop personas, but we favour a light-touch way which emphasises high-level hypotheses over detail.

1. Divide a sheet of A4 into 4 boxes
2. In the top left box, give the persona a picture, firstname, age and role (eg user, practitioner etc)
3. In the top right box, introduce them with pertinent points that affect the way they engage with the service
4. In the bottom left box, describe their experience of the current situation in 5-7 bullet points
5. In the bottom right box, describe their experience of an ideal ‘future state’

Ask participants to introduce their persona to the group and present their thoughts. They should not be challenged, but after everyone has introduced a persona, you may wish to conduct 2-3 further rounds of sketching.

For inspiration

An example persona

Personas and user journeys in design thinking