Understanding target users is essential for creating products that truly resonate with the audience. The Advanced Persona feature in ProductGo empowers teams to design user personas directly within Jira, helping them integrate user-centered design into their workflow and make informed, empathetic decisions.
The Concept of User Personas
A user persona is a fictional character representing a specific user type, crafted using real data and research insights. This character embodies user demographics, needs, behaviors, and goals, enabling teams to design with empathy and precision.
Key Features
The Advanced Persona feature in ProductGo is rich in functionality, enabling teams to capture and utilize user insights effectively:
- Detailed User Profiles: Capture a range of persona details, including demographic data, behavioral insights, needs, and goals with our customizable components.
- Cross-Project Persona Accessibility: Personas can be created as project-specific or global, allowing teams to use them across different projects as needed.
- Flexible Integration: Easily incorporate personas into Story Maps and Portfolio Boards, embedding user insights into various planning stages.
- Visual Organization: Use personas in different views, such as adding personas to specific goals or tasks, making it simple to see where and how each user type influences the roadmap.
- Various Templates: Create a detailed persona in a minute with our various predefined templates in many common categories.
Benefits of Using User Personas in Product Development
User personas offer a range of benefits that enhance product quality and alignment with user needs:
- User-Centered Design: By keeping user personas at the forefront, teams can ensure that products align closely with actual user needs and preferences, improving usability and relevance.
- Comprehensive Understanding: Personas clarify the motivations, pain points, and needs of users, allowing teams to make design and feature decisions that address real problems.
- Enhanced Team Communication: Personas serve as a common reference point, fostering understanding and collaboration between design, development, and marketing teams.
- Targeted Marketing: With personas guiding strategies, marketing and sales efforts can be more personalized, which often improves customer engagement and conversion.
- Feature Prioritization: Personas help prioritize features based on user importance, ensuring resources are spent on features that will have the greatest impact.
- Reduced Development Risks: Using personas allows for more focused iterative testing and feedback, which can reduce the risk of building irrelevant features.
Getting Started with ProductGo
ProductGo is a robust Jira-integrated tool developed by DevSamurai, designed to support agile product management. It allows teams to create story maps, roadmaps, portfolio boards, and advanced personas to facilitate product development and stakeholder communication, all within the Jira ecosystem.
Steps to Set Up and Use the Advanced Persona Feature in ProductGo
Persona is an additional feature of ProductGo which helps the team understand users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals. It can help to recognize that different people have different needs and expectations, and it can also help to identify with the user you’re designing for.
The Persona feature can be accessed by going to both User Story Map and Portfolio Board, or directly from the ProductGo main page on the Apps menu. You can discover more details about this feature here in our documentation.
In this demonstration, we will create a new Persona in the Story Map.
Step 1: Go to the Persona feature
Click on the Persona button at the top menu of your story map to access the Persona feature
In the right panel appeared, there are 2 groups:
- The project’s personas. Personas created in this group are only available to use within the project.
- Global personas. Personas created in this group can be used throughout the projects in your Jira instance.
Step 2: Create a new Persona
Based on your team’s needs, create a new persona by clicking on the “+” button when hovering your mouse over the group your team wants to use.
Choose to make a persona with a predefined template or start from scratch.
Fill in the details of your User Persona in the added components, here are some suggestions:
- General Information: Name, Avatar, Project
- Demographics
- Behaviors
- Needs & Goals
Click Save to save your edits on the persona. Now your persona is ready to use in Story Map and Portfolio Board.
Step 3: Manage Personas
From the right panel, you can view all your created Personas data. Or you can go to Apps > ProductGo > Personas to manage them.
Here you can browse all personas in your Jira instance, and make edits or delete the personas. Use the filters above to sort out the personas based on your needs.
Step 4: Add Persona to Story Map/Portfolio Board
There are 2 ways to add Personas to your Story Map/Portfolio Board:
A. Add in the Goal details
- Click on the Goal details
- Add personas in the Personas field
B. Add directly on the Story Map/Portfolio Board
- Turn on the “Show personas” option in the User Settings
- Click on the button above the Goals to add
Best Practices for Using Personas in ProductGo
To get the most value from the advanced persona feature in ProductGo, consider these best practices:
- Base Personas on Research: Ensure personas are based on real user research or data to enhance accuracy and relevance.
- Keep Personas Updated: Regularly review and update personas to reflect changes in the user base or product strategy.
- Integrate Personas Across Teams: Share personas widely to keep teams aligned on user needs, especially across design, development, and marketing functions.
- Use Personas to Guide Decisions: Refer to personas frequently during planning and prioritization sessions to keep user needs central to discussions.
- Customize for Flexibility: Use custom fields to adapt personas for specific project needs, such as highlighting unique pain points or behaviors.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Avoid these common pitfalls to ensure personas remain a valuable tool:
- Creating Personas without Data: Avoid basing personas on assumptions. Real research is crucial to building accurate, useful personas.
- Underutilizing Personas: Don’t let personas become static; actively use them in project planning, design decisions, and feature prioritization.
- Overloading Personas with Information: While detail is helpful, too much can make personas cumbersome. Focus on the most impactful insights.
- Neglecting Cross-Project Personas: Failing to use global personas when relevant can lead to redundant work. Consider if a persona could be useful across projects before creating a project-specific one.
Need Help?
We’re here to make sure you succeed with ProductGo:
- Check out our detailed documentation
- Watch our quick-start video guides
- Email our support team at atlassian@devsamurai.com
- Create a support ticket for specific questions
Ready to make product management easier? Try ProductGo free for 30 days and see the difference it can make for your team.
Summary
The Advanced Persona feature in ProductGo enables teams to create detailed user personas directly within Jira, promoting a user-centered approach to product development. By providing insights into target users, personas help teams prioritize effectively, design with empathy, and streamline communication across functions. With its seamless integration, ProductGo’s Persona feature enhances the story mapping and planning process, helping teams ensure that their products address real user needs and deliver meaningful value.
