Personas

Personas

Using psychographic analysis to better understand groups of users

What are personas?

A persona is a fictional character created to represent a group of users, typically patients or staff groups.

The development of personas involves careful psychographic analysis of data and interviews with users to understand the values, attitudes and beliefs that drive their behaviour.

Psychographics are a useful way to avoid stereotypes or assumptions being made about a particular demographic or clinical diagnosis, instead focusing on a holistic view of the user’s needs.

How are personas used in healthcare improvement?

NHS Horizons typically creates personas to represent staff, patient or service user groups for use in service re-design and change programmes.

Clinical teams can use the personas to evaluate possible scenarios or service changes and how a particular group of patients would respond.

Personas can also be used to identify gaps in a service provision by highlighting unmet needs.

Read more about our personas work

Illustration of the steps for developing personas. step 1 identify your users, step 2 conduct interviews, step 3 analyse the data, step 4 create a first draft, step 5 select an image of your user, step 6 conduct user test, step 7 launch and then revisit the personas frequently to ensure they are relevant

For more information contact Claire Shields