2021: The year to revisit Personas
By: Jesús R
Tags: User Research, UX, Customer Experience, User Experience, Product Management

2020 has been, without question, a year of disruption, uncertainty, and unknown territories; with a pandemic that shifted routines and daily lives came a flux in consumption habits, expenditure, and how we spend time. Countries began drafting laws to give people the legal right to work from home [1]; the dining room has become an office, the kitchen counter a meeting place, the living room a quick workout area, all setting new realities and habits for many. In contrast, others are even forced into the digital landscape more than before.

Certainly, we will not be on lockdown forever, but we are all finding new ways to entertain, shop, date, exercise, meet friends, or even visit a doctor. The final impact of this pandemic remains to be seen. However, these new forms raise questions about people’s expectations and whether these changes in behaviours, consumer landscape and social structures are here to stick, what will come back and how it will be back.

We must get the customer and user experience right and understand our audience’s needs and their relationship with the various factors influencing their environment.

Is your empathy muscle in tune with the new realities your customers and users are facing? How is your product or service adapting to these changes?

If you have not done it yet, 2021 could not be the best year to turn into one of the best empathy tools a team can use to do that: Personas.

A pandemic-driven change

While the pandemic has slowed many things down, it has also accelerated others, such as an expansion of e-commerce [2]

What will be the permanent consequences of the pandemic on your users? What new behaviours are emerging? These are questions any product team must answer to stay ahead of the game.

According to Forrester, 2021 will be about experimenting and unifying channels, supported by investments in personalization, digital asset management, and even augmented and virtual reality, which will accelerate as sellers look to stand out on the digital shelf and boost search rankings. [3]

This likely means that companies are or will be reinventing themselves to adapt and deliver products, services and experiences that make more sense for today’s and tomorrow’s users. Now is time to up your game; as your users spread their time across a growing breadth of online media, demonstrating an understanding of who they are through experiences is the least we can do.

Think human first, not channel first.

It may be easy to start thinking about having a presence in all channels, but we must explore beyond a CTA, “Subscribe” or a “Buy” button in every channel. We might find new audiences, the places, how we meet their needs, and how your product fits in their lives. Are you closing digital divides or are you leaving them behind?

What questions can help us focus and recalibrate?

What behaviours are changing for the people you serve?

How is technology changing to meet the needs of the people?

What does that mean for your product?

How will you shape your UX moving forward?

What are the gaps and divides?

Adapting to shifting behaviours may seem daunting, but the future of your product depends on it. With the questions above in mind, and assuming you have already exercised your personas, here are some suggestions to start working on your post-pandemic persona’s journey, envision and curate better experiences and strategies that speak directly to your audience.