User Personas (post #9)
User personas are fictional people that represent groups of similar users that behave in certain ways. User personas help to increase empathy towards your users.
User personas include name, age, photo/sketch, what is most important to them about your product, and what they want to be able to do easily. We had already compiled a lot of this data through customer development (post #7), when we did our customer interviews. Here is a combination of the information we had about ASVAB students from those interviews as well as some information just based on basic internet research:
Name: Randy
Age:21
Education: high school diploma
Gender: male (85%)
Race/ethnicity: white (70%) https://www.statista.com/statistics/214869/share-of-active-duty-enlisted-women-and-men-in-the-us-military/
Current Occupation: cashier 40 hrs. a week
Hobbies: video games, working out
What they like about our product idea: studying takes up less of his free time and the product customizes to him. Have a lot of fear that math concepts will be explained (in a classroom, book or digital product) but he won’t understand.
What they want to be able to do easily: get into the military. As far as the ASVAB specifically is concerned, he wants to be able to do math more easily.
Misc.: doesn’t own a computer (desktop or laptop) but does have a pretty nice smartphone. Mostly uses his phone for social media and gaming. Randy sees the military as an opportunity for a career that he does not otherwise have access to. Both in terms of income and opportunities for advancement. There is also a lot of pride in the idea of serving/protecting the United States.
Overview: Randy is a 21 year old white male who has a high school diploma but no college education. He currently works as a cashier at a burger joint. In his free time he likes to either play video games or work out, although he spends significantly more time on video games. He does not own a computer but has a nice iPhone 11. Randy has never been good at math. Given that the math counts for 50% of his ASVAB score, he feels that he needs to improve his math skills but is not confident that he can do this. Randy likes the idea of an app that can help him to not have to use so much of his free time to study for the ASVAB. He also likes the idea of an app that can figure out what he does not know and help him to learn these concepts. Even if the concepts are things that he “should” know, like multiplication tables.