The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design


Once you have a set of skeletons, it is time to get feedback from your stakeholders. You will evaluate the importance of each skeleton to your business and product strategy and prioritize the skeletons accordingly. During gestation, you will identify a subset of skeletons to develop into personas.
It is time to prioritize your skeletons. To do this, schedule a meeting with members of your persona core team who understand the data you have collected and stakeholders empowered to make decisions about the strategic focus of the company. If stakeholders are not aware of the data and general process that led to these skeletons, present that information before introducing the skeletons to them. It is important to carefully plan and manage your prioritization meeting. Before you get started, remind everyone of the goals of the meeting and the impact their decisions will have on the project.
These skeletons were derived from data, and should map fairly clearly to the user types (categories and subcategories) you already reviewed together.
Prioritization should focus on immediate goals or low-hanging fruit. Remind the team that the goal is to reduce the possible set of targets to just those that are critical to your current product cycle. Remember that you can prioritize the skeletons differently for subsequent versions of this product or for derivative or sibling products.
Prioritizing does not mean abandoning the...