Hilary Marsh Alright. Hi everyone, and welcome to this presentation, Empathy-Bbased Personas: Shifting Your Organization's View from Inside-Out to Outside-In. I'm thrilled to be We are thrilled to be presenting this to you today. My name is Hilary Marsh. And I'm here today with Esteban Gonzalez. Hi Esteban. Esteban Gonzalez Hello. Hilary Marsh So here is a tiny bit about us. Hilary Marsh We have worked together often on on on project involving this approach since 2009, when I first hired a Stefan as a consultant to help me develop personas at the National Association of Realtors. So you'll hear a little bit more about that. Some of the other work we've been doing together since then, and mostly what the process looks like what and why it's good for you. Anything to add? Esteban Gonzalez Um nothing other than, we're really happy to be here in this very unusual setting, and hope you enjoy this. And please bear with us as we're trying to deal with kind of weird new technologies and stuff like that. But we're really excited about bringing this information to you guys. Hilary Marsh So here's our agenda that we're going to be covering during this presentation. The challenges that typical persona processes have, what outside thing in thinking looks like versus inside out what we mean by empathy, the idea of empathy based personas and what the process looks like and the outcomes that it can bring to your organization. So the challenge with most personas is, is this really So for the most part, organizations see things through their own eyes, they see them from an inside out perspective. And what that looks like is that they act like customers are waiting for their new products, their new information, their new offerings. They don't have a full time job, right? They they're waiting for the company's new offering with bated breath. They assume their customers understand their jargon. And they assume things like that people can find what they're looking for on a website organized around their org chart. Esteban Gonzalez So personas have been a really good tool for overcoming, you know, this obvious problem. We know we all of us know that they're extremely helpful for a range of things, you know, what kinds of things we should make an offer? How should we present ourselves to our customers, you know, what can we do to maximize our chances of success? You know, we all in this room, though, know that this isn't necessarily just For everyone else, and you know, companies make them, but they don't use them. The senior executives often don't champion them. People know about them, because they don't really socialize. But they're not really socialized across an organization, essentially, you know, what we all fear is that they sit as a nice deck on a shelf and just gather dust. So for us, you know, this is really because we tend to think of that, part of the problem is, is that, from our experience, we think that maybe the reason is that we've been doing them wrong. So why wrong, essentially, because the personas we usually have made, don't provide the right context for them to be successful. So we found this great video to kind of show you and give you a little bit more information about what we're talking about. Esteban Gonzalez Research shows that we empathize more with individual people in a group than we do with the group as a whole. But research was made to be repeated. So we devised our own experiment to test what makes us feel for others. Hi, Julian. Hi, Emily. We invited participants in and ask them to watch a video about homelessness. They didn't know it, but we actually had them watch one of two videos. One video had a lot of facts and figures. The other video focused on one individual homeless man named John. John (Homeless Man) "This is where I sleep at night. I lay my blanket down my backpack like I have my backpack here. I can't feel him anymore. Try not to come here before charge because I don't like pitch me too long. So they're really nice. I know everybody Don't bother. Nobody has tried anything on this side of the line. I killed over 70 confirmed kills as a sniper. I'm trying to atone to the Lord right now for it. The god I know he forgives me. Esteban Gonzalez After watching the video, we asked them a few questions about it. So what did you think of the video? Did it evoke anything in particular, Speaker 1 The numbers themselves grabbed at me, but then it was what those numbers represented that grabbed me more. Speaker 2 You know, in this day and age when you're bombarded with numbers and stats and it quickly becomes overwhelming, Speaker 3 You don't have the time. But I think you need to really focus we need to see imagery because you see someone and you think I can be that person, Speaker 4 Being able to really imagine yourself and put yourself in someone else's place. Like a lot of people will judge homeless people, but they don't actually imagine what it'd be like just have no one. Sleep on the street. Like, be ignored by everyone and judge like that is Speaker 5 The story If you're paying attention, it gets inside of you and you realize the humanity that's there and Esteban Gonzalez then told them they were done. We compensated them for their time in cash and showed them the door. But the final part of the experiment was actually outside. Waiting for them was Christian, an actor disguised as a homeless man. Now we wait and see if the video had an impact, or quantifiable measurement for how much the videos impacted them was how much they donated to Christian. Christian Oh, dude, thank you. I appreciate that. Christian You have a good day too. Wow, man. Thank you. Christian I haven't yet I was going to. Christian How about like $1 25 will pay for a taco. All right. Christian Well, you know what? Christian Oh, that is so incredibly sweet of you. Thank you so much. Speaker 6 Have a good day. Esteban Gonzalez On average, people who watch the statistical video donated $2 and 80 cents, not bad. It means that thinking about the larger problem did have an effect. However, people who watch our video about john donated on average $4. Their larger donations meant that they were more moved to action when they connected with an individual in need. Don't worry, though, Christian gave it all back. I think seeing a personal story seeing it through someone's eyes like, what's what's been going on in their lives, it just makes you feel so much more. Because that, again, it just turns them into a Speaker 6 person as opposed to a number. Esteban Gonzalez helping the homeless is an important cause. But the lesson here can be applied to so much more. Remember when you start to learn about problems that affect hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. There are individuals hidden in those numbers. And when you start to see them as people, you start to feel for them more Research shows that we empathize more Hilary Marsh Okay, sorry. Esteban Gonzalez There you go. That's fine. So when the conference was gonna be in person, you know, in Hilary Marsh the video, what's the series that this is part of? So this is Esteban Gonzalez from SoulPancake. bank? It's Yeah, it's actually Yeah. Right. They do a lot of different things like that. So when the conference is gonna be in person, you know, before social distancing, we were gonna have an interactive exercise that we could conduct with all of you to kind of bring some of these points to life. Hilary Marsh So the exercise was basically that we envisioned was that we were going to show people this photo with a little story, hey, you know, I'm down to my last $500 and rent is due, can you help me out and obviously, we couldn't Do that. So. So we created a, an online survey. And I put it out there on Twitter and in different communities. And I didn't. And I just said, Hey, I'm doing an experiment. Could you take my three questions survey? I didn't say it was for the IAA conference. I didn't say it was for a session on empathy based personas. Some of you might have taken this survey, but it was really three questions. One, here's the person two would you or when to help them out? Or, you know, would you help them out? Why or why not? And how much would you give? So, but they got one of two situations. And it's interesting because when we created this, we had not yet found that other video. So you'll see some parallels. So situation a that half the people saw was this is a homeless woman who sits outside of the place where you buy your coffee every day. Half the other half the people saw sit down Be this request comes to us through your best friend. This is her sister, who you've known since you were all children. So over three days earlier in April 2020, we had 62 responses. And so that was the AV test. And our results were actually more extreme than what the video showed. So in our case, would you help this woman? The if, if it was situation a the homeless woman 10 people said yes. 15 said maybe 10 said no. And this was anonymous. I didn't collect any or we didn't collect any information. So we don't really know who these people were. But for a friend 16% 16 people said yes, 11 maybe and zero people said no. For the homeless woman 10 people said they give $1 or less 17 so they get five, one, so they would give 10 and three cents. They would give 20 nobody said $50 or more and look at the difference in the friend chart. Nobody said $1 or less, and you can see the numbers, but 11 people said they give $50 more. And and the point for all of this is that context makes all the difference in how people hear a story. And as Devin, I think you were gonna expand on that, Esteban Gonzalez Right. So, you know, when you so go ahead and go to the next slide. Esteban Gonzalez So for us are, what we're starting to see is, you know, it's really context that makes things more significant, more immediate. I think we all can identify with this, you know, this connection helps you understand things from another person's perspective. So, no matter how different their lives can be, you still kind of connect with them, that allows you to be able to kind of put yourself in their shoes. And, you know, we all know this as empathy. Um, but it's nice to see it actually illustrated like Like this. And so when we bring it back to talking about personas, you know, empathy makes a lot of sense in terms of trying to make these things stick stick with whoever's doing this. But the key was that this really kind of got us thinking. And so it led to some Hilary Marsh other before we, there's a point that that I want to make sure that they hear this third bullet on the slide, we need to elicit empathy, if we want our personas to stick. So we need to make the people reading the personas feel that empathy, that that they would have, in in that same situation that we saw the AV test, I've seen kind of empathy. Esteban Gonzalez Absolutely. So let's you know what that actually did, or that kind of idea got us to thinking about some other things that we began to notice. And so you know, when we started thinking about like personas and Why these problems happen with it? You know, well, what if it's not just about the personas themselves? But really what if it's also about how organizations typically get to know these personas and get to create these personas and integrate them into the culture. So this got us thinking. And let us to consider this difference between two different kinds of organizations that we notice through the different kinds of work that we've done. There seem to be organizations that saw things mostly from the inside looking out at customers or stakeholders. But there also seem to be other ones that actually are the other way around, outside looking in from the point of view of the customer back into what the company is really all about. Hilary Marsh Well so, let me just say one thing. Sure. I don't think that these are two inherently different kinds of companies. I think any company can be either one. But all too often, companies today. Start out from that inside out perspective and we want to help Help use these personas as a tool to move any organization to having that outside in perspective. So it's not like we started with one type and, and change to a different type. We want to shift how that organization looks at itself and looks at its audience. Esteban Gonzalez Right. And I think I think you're right. I think that there's elements of both sides in it. The question is, where does the culture really kind of come from? And is the culture really one that understands this different and uses its uses this understanding to its advantage as it kind of goes on? So, you know, really for us, though, when we're, we're thinking about this kind of stuff. You know, this became a huge clue for thinking about, you know, how we could make personas that would, you know, stick with the organization, you know, that the whole organization feels comfortable using, you know, personas that actually kind of begin to talk about this difference and focus on what's that relationship that the company has With its audience in terms of how it's conceives of itself, personas have become much bigger contributor to the organization's overall success. I mean, that would be the ultimate goal, right? That's what we want to do. And so we thought a little bit more about what are the deeper reasons why they don't necessarily click and, you know, essentially, many times personas are like this guy on the side of the road, you know, it's like, if you saw this driving down the road one night, you know, would you pick them up on a dark right night? Probably not. Because it's a stranger, right? stranger danger. So it's not necessarily something that people can feel warm about, that people can feel close to. And, you know, you they might recognize some of the data and they might recognize some of the things around it, but it's not anything that's really going to make them kind of assume them and bring them into themselves. Okay. So, you know, we thought, Okay, well as people, we go through this, right, so how do we look beyond the blocks like this in our own lives? How do we how do we kind of get beyond this problem? Well, we We usually make an effort, right? You know, we try to get to know them, and hopefully understand them a little bit better, and then begin to develop this slow kind of connection. So again, here we are with empathy. So empathy was becoming a really crucial ingredient for kind of getting over this hump. Um, and now, you know, and so so it became a really important part of how we brought and thought about personas. So, you know, we've seen over and over again, when personas work, they're super awesome, you know, but to do this and to be like this, we also know that the most valuable personas need to be more than just a ton of great data wrapped in a cute story. They need to have something that's a little bit more compelling. So personas, Hilary Marsh you know, again, this is the persona that I see most often. And I see that we we Yeah, yeah. So he's all that I see these exact kind of personas all the time. Esteban Gonzalez And I bet you you guys do too. It's like, you know, people pass off things as personas, and you look at them, and they're just, you know, they just sound they have snappy names, you know, the overachiever are the young, intellectual or whatever. Hilary Marsh Just Sally age 32. Yeah, even worse, and there's so organization centric, they're like, this is Sally. This is what she wants from you. So but how does that help? Like, how does that help you make a better decision knowing that she wants these things from you? Oh, it's a checklist. And if there's something missing, Oh, she doesn't want that from you. Does that mean we shouldn't do it? Hmm. They're not really helpful and you don't know Sally any better? Just because there's her picture. Esteban Gonzalez Exactly. So you know, we also it helped us kind of bring into this idea that you know, from, and I'm sure you guys have probably understood this as well. Is it personas wind up being as much about the people who make them as they are about the people who they're supposed to represent. So this is a really key idea. Hilary Marsh Do you think that everybody knows that? Esteban Gonzalez I do. Esteban Gonzalez I think that I think that people kind of know that. I mean, maybe maybe not specifically in this case. But I do think that people have a sense that the that everything carries a certain amount of bias and a certain amount of attitude from the way that they're created. So if you have an organization that's not necessarily working, or an organization, that's, that's, you know, in one particular way, I think that people kind of sense that that's going to affect what happens. I mean, I think that I think that we we all understand about how things work as systems and how there's nothing which is just kind of isolated. So to a certain extent, you know, whether or not it's realization, I don't think it's that that big, an intellectual leap to kind of, you know, take it to that next level. But for us, it becomes really really obvious through the process that we kind of go through? Yeah, so absolutely. Hilary Marsh That's such a good point. Thank you. Esteban Gonzalez Sure. So So in the next slide, I'm basically I'm gonna kind of tell you a little bit of the background. So this is a little bit more about how I came to understand why this is a really valuable thing. So basically, it's 2005. You know, I'm working for a company called organic and I'm working on Carter's kids were a part of a really big branding project, and we're doing a website and you can see the site here. So my background just a little more as I studied anthropology in school, you know, I wrote a wrote about art. Later, I worked in movies and TV, and I eventually became a producer. And then after entertainment is when I started coming over to digital, and then marketing and things like that. So the key thing here though, is that I'm always I've always been really obsessed with how audiences react to things. So the Carters design was actually the first time that I had seen personas now much less even made them. And the IA who led the process was just fantastic. You know, um, at the time, the important thing also is at the time, there were all these great new ideas, like I said, it's 2005, all these great new ideas about creativity from all over the world, from Holland from, you know, everywhere. And these were essentially these new ideas were at the core of what Now, we know as design thinking. And the key was empathy was at the center of so much of this. It was really what powered the idea of creatives being able to bring the bring strategic value to the equation other than just making things that were visually pleasing or aesthetically pleasing. So ri had as part of the preparation our IRA had us do all these kinds of interesting exercises from role playing, as if we were new uncle's buying clothes for our nephews, you know, to following moms around in their strollers and Bryant Park and asking them for advice, you know, and how to be Like, like that same kind of situation where we were going to give a present and what would be the right place to do to actually asking moms and Bloomingdale's, you know, if you could have pictures of what was in their shopping bags and diaper bags, and all of this, essentially, really helped us understand what we meant by this idea of putting ourselves in the shoes. It was really a fantastic experience, you know, but even more the personas were super amazing. They were so amazing that we started out just doing them for the website redesign. But as we went through this process, and the client began to understand what we were doing, these actually wound up becoming the center of the entire rebranding effort. So I mean, how fantastic is that? How often is it that you know you work on something that's the tail that winds up wagging the dog that's much bigger and supposedly much more business critical. So you know, who doesn't love when that happens? So, essentially, um, uh, you know, personas became a really big deal, you know, Forrester got wind of the approach that we were doing and wound up really falling in love with them, and wrote a lot about what we were doing and not so much around for Carter's, but that the approach that we used was then applied to Chrysler and Chrysler wound up being something that they wrote an awful lot about. So personas like this became a really big deal. But for me, though, the key thing was the empathy, the empathy, the fact that that you could do these things, which seemed intuitive, seemed emotional, seemed things that were just really creative. That could all of a sudden wind up impacting the business was a major Aha. So that was really the story behind why I wound up saying, okay, we have to find a way to capture this and create a form and a process to kind of bring this to the table in every kind of situation. Esteban Gonzalez So Hilary Marsh So I sort of want to tell you how we met and how I've seen this process work incredibly well what Pat, at least a half dozen times, and I know that you've established have worked on it way more times than that. But empathy based personas really involve the organization in a different way. So we met in 2009 when I was the website director for the member website for the National Association of Realtors, one of the biggest associations in the country so 300 staff people, a million members, and the the organization really had trouble prioritizing and had trouble really agreeing on who the most important audiences are. And there was there were a lot of battles for what goes you know, first on the homepage and what goes first in any newsletter and Whose initiative is more important than the next next initiative? And who are we really addressing anyway? And, and so we had thought about creating personas for quite a long time. And then I was introduced through colleague to a Stefan who had just gone on his own. And we decided to have this process. And frankly, I was skeptical. I was skeptical that any process could bring people together. And this is me on the right, with my hands folded. And, and there were really lively discussions. And to my surprise, we well, I'll leave that for for a little bit later, but it worked amazingly well. And I was kind of hooked. Yeah. Esteban Gonzalez So yeah, I mean, it was a fantastic experience. And it was the, you know, it wasn't the first time that I'd have actually used the process that I developed, but it was definitely, you know, brought out I think a lot of the things that that we're talking about different organizations and how it could create some alignment where there, you know, were challenges for alignment before. The thing that's kind of really cool about about the situation is that when you bring empathy into this kind of process, and you do it in this kind of workshop way, it essentially brings two things together that you may not necessarily deal with together all the time. So first of all, it really brings this idea about how do we create qualitatively better personas, but at the same time, it's like how do we begin to understand the culture that's going to use and accept and kind of then employ them to answer questions about you know, about the company and how it should operate. So, um, you know, now to kind of talk a little bit about how we go about the process that we go about doing this stuff. So we essentially start with the same thing. inputs that, you know, we all, we all know, we start with, you know, we go survey data, there's stacks of, you know, qualitative and quantitative research. Hilary Marsh There's audience surveys needs assessment members Esteban Gonzalez that Yeah, all kinds of stuff also interviews someplace. Exactly. And interviews and observations, you know, best practices, we bring all of this stuff into the kind of situation and you know, um, so what normally happens, right? And then Hilary Marsh What normally happens next is that the consultant that IA play the external person, or the person sitting on the web team, digests it all and puts the persona together. And that's, you know, so so the IA is transformed the person creating the persona really And the person who did the interviews, the person who gathered all that data, they have the empathy with the audience. And they get it. They're hooked. They're converted, they really get it. And they can be that spokesperson and champion, but they're doing it by themselves. Because the rest of the organization is sitting where it's always sad, and being who it's always been. So do I say this? Or do you say this? I say this. Okay. So in our process instead, and the transformative piece, and the picture you saw the people sitting around the table, is that they created the personas. And every single time I tell this to a client, they're skeptical. They say, Well, you know what, what do you mean? You're not going to go out there and just go do the observation and tell us? No, you are smart inside. You know, your audience you've had encounters with them, your customer service people. Have if whatever type of organization you're in, you have contact with them. And not only that, you know, people in your personal life who are like them, and you can, if you think about it, draw the connection between the people you know, and the customers your organization serves. And that's a new idea. So then we're not the magic makers, ourselves. We're facilitators of the organization, getting the empathy. What I say this part two, okay, so, sorry. Hilary Marsh So really, you know, if we think about it in these discussions, and the way this session, the brainstorming sessions go, they put themselves in their audience's shoes. They see things in common with people they know. They connect what they do. This is a radical idea for most organizations, and I come at it from a content strategy point of view. They connect the content they produce, which is about their offerings, with the people on with the radical concept that there's somebody on the other end using what you produce. And typically people don't think about it. It's not what they're held account accountable for. It's not really what they're what they're used to. It's why they speak in jargon, because they kind of assume that the audience knows what they know that they've been waiting for what they do, and that they are doing nothing but spending their full time consuming that. So instead, they're spending this three hours of time or really six hours all together, really thinking about their work and their organization from the audience's point of view. And not only them as customers, them as people. So they're looking beyond the obvious and and Yeah. Esteban Gonzalez So yeah, for, for us, it's kind of the same thing, you know, we have to rethink about the way that we see all of the material that, you know, we're looking at and to kind of identify, you know, digest and bring into discovery. So, you know, in discovery, we wind up doing a, you know, kind of a similar thing, we have to take those stacks of material and try to look beyond the obvious, you know, and try to see, as well, like, How are the things that are they're affecting the team? And how, how potentially, would the team be interacting with that? So we have put ourselves in their shoes, you know, we have to understand what the pressures are and the needs are right now of the team and what what really is going on there. And we have to start to notice you know, what's influencing, try to uncover these different things that are influencing the way that they see their audience and the way they kind of respond to their audience. And the biggest thing For us is that we wind up being in this position where if we're going to make this happen as facilitators, a really important part of what we can bring to the table is our ability to try to think above the data, and our ability to try to think of these people as human beings, and not as just this collection of data and these collection of artifacts, but to really think about them as real people, and help help the team do what we're asking them to do, which is to think beyond the obvious, try to get them to start thinking about things like, you know, what are the values that are going on here? What are the attitudes that people are living with? You know, what are the motivations, you know, what are the larger trends going on in the larger events in society? You know, like for us, like I can tell you right now, there's going to be a lot of things that are going to be happening where people are going to start talking about, you know, well, what is it now now that people have a different idea of how to work and how to communicate what it's like to be isolated and not know try to make Those kind of connections, for us are the kind of things that we try to do when we try to think above the data. You know, and then if we're lucky, and you know, what we, we always advocate would really love to do more. But if we're lucky, we get to kind of get out there and do some of the cool stuff. Like what I mentioned on Carter's, you know, we get to visit actual people and see what they're really all about, and then bring that into the workshops, you know, and to have that kind of live, you know, right. Hilary Marsh Right so so when you when, when I said, Sure, you can go to this, you know, event in Washington, and this particular one draws a lot of people who are exceptionally involved members, and, and it's the legislative events. So it's where people learn about our advocacy activities that we were doing and that kind of thing. You came back with an insight that or not even an insight, a way of describing what you saw. That was really helpful. You came back and you said the people who are there are basically Kwazii staff. And that was a really important term and phrase to bring back to my peers who were there. Because what that said is, don't do focus groups with these members, because they're not your typical average member, they may as well work here. So they do exactly understand your jargon. They do, in fact, understand understand your org chart, but they're not the representative sampling of everybody. So don't kind of assume that they are, they're not really an audience, per se. They're more much closer to some an internal group. And that was really helpful for me to work with. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, so you know, and it's the only way I could have made that observation was to like, walk around and see these people and see them waiting in the lobby and see them waiting for their rides and see them, you know, see how they're interacting and see see all of these things. Kind of firsthand and develop this kind of intuitive sense of the way they worked. So this was an awesome awesome opportunity and I think it actually totally showed up in the work that we did in the in the workshops afterwards. So um you know and and we try to do this in a lot of different ways you know, here's Hilary Marsh another Beasley was not our Esteban Gonzalez na right NAR another one that you did, right this is this is something that I did with another client none New Balance where I got to visit college students because we're doing a campaign for college students and was really trying to understand the role of running and what that really was. And you know, I mean, this is just one picture here. But you know, you can look at this and not see the ribbons and the, you know, the bibs and all of this stuff to see what kind of place running has in this woman's life. You know, it's this this kind of emotional aha put you in amazing place for making personas. So and they actually help you do what I was mentioning about thinking above the data and thinking between the lines, and trying to kind of bring that stuff out. Hilary Marsh Well, you know, the other thing that I notice about this picture is that this girl is not a stick. She's not like an anorexic looking figure. And I think that that's important, because I think it's all too easy to be stereotypical about your audience. And I see it in a ton of personas that they're, they just use every single assumption and stereotype that the company is likely to have, Esteban Gonzalez Right and actually, so doing things like this helps you get away from that. And it's not always easy to do. I mean, if any of you have gone through this process, that who doesn't have the time where you wind up, basically scratching your head and saying, are we making a cartoon? Are we making a cartoon? You know, is this a caricature? Because this kind of human I don't want him at the table and be you know, is this They actually even exist. So you know mean doing things like this are always really good gut check and they kind of expand your ability to think. Right? Hilary Marsh I say this okay. So the think sorry. Good Practice. Okay. Esteban Gonzalez By the way, I will have to mention we are about 30 miles away from each other in Chicago. Very distantly social and no, no but so so that's why we might have a little bit of like, Alright, Hilary Marsh cuz I'm, you know, this isn't magic or it's not it is magic, actually. But it's not instant. Sometimes, you know, you have to talk. I've had to talk clients into doing it this way, and into just trusting us trusting the process and, and convincing them as it says on the slide to let go and see what happens Because I tell them this is a new way to think about their audience. And really, it's gonna make a big difference. Esteban Gonzalez So and kind of help with that, you know, we have tools and things that we do along the way. So the first thing that we do is we create a model. And the model is really important. And if you can see this, but these models competitive number of dimensions, and it's essentially, these dimensions that say, if someone is like more on one side, or someone is more like on the other, most people don't go all the extreme, there's somewhere in the middle, but in that middle is a little bit understanding. The key thing is these aren't normal things that you would start to talk about when you're talking about somebody in kind of a marketing or even a business business situation you're asking, you know, like some of the questions are, when I finish or accomplish something, my first instinct is to find another goal, or to sit back and relax. So we know those kind of people, but we probably don't talk about about those kind of people, you know, in a business setting, you know, are for instance, when I'm facing a challenge, I'm driven more by my internal conviction, or by the external pressures, I've realized about my responsibilities. So those are things that that all of us can identify with, because we've all faced those things. But the they are actually extracted from the data that we read and the research that we read to go into these sessions. Hilary Marsh So you plot them, you plot each persona, on the spectrum in a different place that reflect helps reflect and articulate who they are as people. Esteban Gonzalez Absolutely. Yeah. Hilary Marsh So what we do so not generic, I didn't mention that or I wanted to make sure you mentioned that. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, they're not evergreen. So they're different for each particular instance that we go through. But the key point is, is that they start to skew the measure. We're not talking about inches. anymore we're not talking about feet or grams what we're talking about is great deviations of emotions gradiation of responses. So we're beginning to, you know, to kind of slightly soften the the way we understand these people. So what we do with them is we then create skeletons we add stories to two we add stories to these people or these these skeleton personas and we create a bunch of them so it's not just the ones we're going to be working for. Yeah, we at least create a dozen most of the time doesn't 16 sometimes 18 different ones depending upon, you know, what the what the situation is, and they cover the wide range of what the research has shown us are the most kind of important or most the areas where people have spent the most time interacting with people that are similar to that. So um, the you Hilary Marsh You include, what gender they are, what age they are, what where they live, like in terms of a setting What their family looks like? Esteban Gonzalez Exactly. Hilary Marsh And a story about them based on the data. So in right into the model with the dots, you come with stories, Esteban Gonzalez right? And the thing is, is that, you know, when we go in at this stage of the game, excuse me, nothing is completely fixed. But this is just as much about trying to get people to think outside of just the data and the segments and all the different things that they're using to get them to think a little bit more about, you know, what's going on and how they could connect with these people. Hilary Marsh So I don't think we've said this, but the process is that there's like two workshops. Right, so the first workshop is the persona workshop. The second workshop is the journey workshop. And so in the persona workshop, the very first activity is to paste the the skeletons across a wall. Have people vote with post it notes about which are the which are the most important. And they get three or four. I've never personally had a client who is willing to go to three. And, and most of them are really surprised at the beginning to hear that they only get four, because they say and the particular client contact tends to say there's no way that my people are going to agree that we only have four top priority audiences. And certainly it's what I thought when I worked in, in hire to step on to help us do this in 2009. And in fact, it takes 45 minutes every single time it's possible every single time there are four that rise to the top and and it takes 45 minutes. The good news is that If somebody needs to be a little older if somebody needs to be in a different setting, if somebody needs to be International, so how do we address an international member? Well, we have a pet. So we can just make one of the people live outside the US and use that person and their situation because they're still the same human being. But we make them International. So then they can serve as an international member and an executive. And they could serve as a young person starting in the field and a subject matter expert in a particular area that the companies or organization serves, Esteban Gonzalez Right. I think that the important thing about this part of the exercise is that because of this prioritization, this forced prioritization, people start to start to think about what is really the issue at hand. So they're also narrowing, you know, in addition to narrowing down the possible personas, they're also narrowing down and prioritizing Well, what are the most important things for this organization that we really care about? And they're doing it in a different way. So nobody, and I think we've all experienced this, nobody is sitting there saying, Yeah, I'm in department x. And you know, department x isn't really that important. But if I say that, then my budgets gone. So all of a sudden, it allows them to talk about things that's not in a personal way. It's not about their business function. It's not about you know, the organization. It's about really like, okay, kind of almost existentially, who are the most important people to this particular issue? Hilary Marsh Well, and like after the first few minutes, when we've said like, please check your job title at the door, that's easy. But in fact, they stopped thinking about their own departments priorities, and they're, they're willing to make that leap and start dressing the organization's priorities. So After that exercise 45 minutes, then we have like a lightning round, the rest of the day goes into lightning round. And we always run out of time. And we always like the conversations flow, because then there's the brainstorming, individual brainstorming exercises. And Esteban Gonzalez Sure, yeah, so what we brainstorm about each of the skeletons once we've kind of narrowed them down and what we landed on. we brainstorm with them about things like motivations, what makes them do things? What are they afraid of, you know, what are the things that get in the way of their normal operation that are frustrating? What are their aspirations? Like if they were to think in a higher order? What are their aspirations? And the thing that's really important is that we always say that this is a combination because we're talking about people here, and people may not be totally 100% occupied by their role. Hopefully they're not but you know, people can ask have professional motivations or motivations in terms of the way that they're operating for the issue at hand or for whatever the project is at hand. But they also have personal motivations. You know, I want to make my parents proud, you know, personal frustrations, like, you know, I really hate that I'm the one who always seems to be to start my second job when I get back from work, you know, things like that, that are really important for us to kind of capture because they give us a little bit of a flavor around these people. So I love the thing. Yeah, the thing that's really awesome here is that when you start talking about things like this, they start getting really interesting. You know, people start to slowly speak for the personas. And this skeletons begin to slowly come to life and also, the chemistry of the group takes off. And it's not just about people and their position or chart or the origin or the departments they're from, but it's really them as empathetic, kind of Understanding humans that are talking about what another human is experience. So, you know, some people get really animated, you know, personalities kind of take over. So animated ones kind of really jump in, some of them lean back maybe seem a little skeptical at first, you know, some people really easily contribute and others are not so sure. You know, the key thing is, is that what we wind up doing is we wind up becoming catalysts for how for making this kind of alchemy happen, you know, making sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute and that nothing really dominates or overpowers, you know, the whole discussion. And that really what we're after is the voice of the of the skeleton becoming the persona and not after anyone who's particularly in the room for, you know, with their role within the business. Hilary Marsh Well, there's two things I wanted to add, though, right? One is that we didn't say who's in the room for these brainstorming sessions. So the important thing Is that it represents a cross functional team. And also that it includes people of different hierarchical levels within the organization. And that's important because often the biggest insights come from the person you might least expect. It's not necessarily from the executive, it could be from the junior person who, who is brilliant, but hasn't always had the opportunity to speak. Hilary Marsh So, you know, you make it it's Esteban Hilary Marsh does a really great job at bringing out well, what did you say? And why did you say that? And what did you write and why did you write that? So everybody's voice is present too. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, I think actually, this is a really good story. So in the Carter's thing, what was really amazing is we're building this website. And you know, typically, it's creatives. It's, you know, it's designers, it's tech people, you know, we're doing front end stuff, and we're talking about kids where, and what we wound up doing is we wound up bringing our system engineer who was like 45, had four kids and was the only person that organic who had four kids. So the thing that he was able to contribute and bring to the table, we heard all kinds of stuff about what life was like to be a parent, that none of us who would have been there normally would have had any kind of inkling of. So it is really good to bring people who sometimes maybe have more of a bead on what your customer feels. Sometimes they're, they interact with them, because their customer service, sometimes they're, you know, they're they're the one answering the mail, you know, some sometimes, you know, they're the person who's actually making the sales calls. So it's never, it really is important to try to reach out there and figure out who might be the best people to have in the room for something like this. Hilary Marsh Yeah, for sure. So again, this persona reveals as much about the organization and its culture, as there were this word reveals as much about the organization as it does about the personas that come out of the brainstorming sessions. So we hear from voices that aren't used to being heard. The brainstorming really gets easier, like usually after the prioritization thing, the very first Okay, let's brainstorm about the first persona the first skeletons, motivations, people are timid. By the time we get to the third ones motivations, they're on a roll, they get it. They're writing super fast there. They can't wait to get their ideas heard, in fact, and that's exactly what they're looking for. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, we unleashed their inner post it kind of Yes. Oh, yeah, really go for it. Hilary Marsh We've seen the colorful pictures already, is totally what they look like. So the end, and this is where we always always run out of time. The end is that we have this first brainstorming is we give them a name and we give them a face. So there's like a stack of stock photos. And everyone's like, No, no, it's got to be this one. The agent has to be this one. The customer we know has to be this one. No, no, I think it's this one and they lobby for, for who they choose. Yeah, after they pick up a face, then they pick a name. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah. It's really interesting. Because, you know, what happens is that you start to see that people really become very, very attached to things and they start to become very, very protective. They're invested, right? So they care about everything about these people. They get, like super wacky, possessive about the way they are represented the pictures and you know, what they call themselves so that that doesn't really look like Susan, you know, and they should they've really done a lot of work here. And, you know, they have that sense of ownership. That that really, that they can't get without having gone through this process. Yep. So Hilary Marsh So I just wanted to mention so this this work we did in 2009, right? It was a long time ago. And I still remember this so well, which is telling, right, so we ended up with four when I worked for realtor.org. We ended up with four personas. And two of them were real estate agents. And two of them were had different roles. But the agent One of them was one we were familiar with. So this we weren't good at articulating what she was about how long she was in the business, what's going on for her. That was easy and pretty comfortable for us. But then there was another audience who we knew. We knew we needed to address. And we thought about him a lot. But when it all added up, and when they came back to us, we were like, Oh my God, we are scared of this guy. We don't necessarily like him. He's not one we're used to. He's not the one we are already know how to serve, how are we going to deliver the same kind of work we do really super fast really digital really this really that when it was like, Oh my god, it was overwhelming for us to serve this person of a different personality type with different generations, Esteban Gonzalez generation Hilary Marsh different generation. And we know we had to for the future of our organization, but and we knew we didn't know how, but we knew that we had our work cut out for us after really defining who he was. Right, huge shift for us. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah. So when we when we then share the empathy frameworks, you know, the thing is, is that stakeholders can see all the work they did to kind of get here, you know, they see all of the insights that they may have known intuitively, but for some reason, there's either some kind of block or you know, organizational kind of barriers or whatever that they have. really seen out on paper, you know, and they get to see the data that we brought into the session because they can draw the lines between Oh, that was shown here. And we talked about that. And, and even more importantly, they can begin to read between the lines of the data, you know, and they can see the biases that we discussed the tensions and consistencies, and where they really wind up doing is you wind up seeing the insights that they were actually able to contribute to. So, you know, that's great for the people who were in the room, but, you know, the people who haven't been through the room, it's still a little bit of a challenge, you know, and we might find some, some resistance and we certainly, you know, like, like, like we do with everything, you know, wind up having to deal with people who don't necessarily get it in general, people fall in to these two groups, either. There are people who are kind of forward thinking, you know, in the organization and they get it, they really quickly see the value and see the qualitative difference in what we bring to the table than what they've seen before. Okay, and that they see how we're doing Bringing the audience's to life. Okay? But there are also other people who for whatever reason, whether it's you know, just their perspective, kind of their position or whatever, that they're very skeptical, and they're not necessarily clear about what's going on that to certain extent, this is, you know, this just isn't the thing that they had kind of initially thought that would happen. But what we have to do is we have to wind up actually remembering this, and kind of being sensitive to this, and, and understanding that people, you know, we have to just accept this kind of comfort level as something that's real, but then try to find a way for us to, you know, bring empathy back into dealing with them and to remind them of, you know, the connection that they felt in the room, you know, our sponsors, and that that we will find a way to bring the other people around them to that same kind of place. Go, you know, stories Hilary Marsh that I wanted to share as one there in one of the clients that we worked with together. There was one of the personas was a person, a guy who was a little bit later in his career. And he was really looking for a way to give back to the profession through this association that we were working with. And and so once we had him all fleshed out, somebody from the organization said, Oh, my God, I know this guy. He calls me there are members who are just like this, who call me and I'm like, What a pain I can't believe you're calling me again. And now I get it. He's not calling me to be a pain. He's doing this as a way to help and as a way to really give back and I'm going to see him in an entirely different light now and, and she will tell still tell that story to this day. And in fact, that organization is continuing to use these personas. And, and yet the that's always done it that that's the way we've always done it crowd is, is still a little hard to bring along. And I think the key is to have those internal champions and to see them bring to life and sometimes when we've done focus groups, and we have a roomful of Anthony's in a room, and a roomful of Susan's, and they see Yep, they're exactly as you guys painted them basically, then they're convinced. So if that is one way to convince the naysayers is to actually do a focus group. And when we've done that, it's kind of mind boggling to see a roomful totally, who demographically resemble each of these groups and see how on target the organization really is. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, I think that's a good point. We haven't really talked about that and you know, That, you know, and actually, what this slide is about is really more of that idea of understanding that part of the responsibility that comes with being the catalyst is being that person who can kind of comfort and reassure people that the process will bear kind of fruit out in in the end. But what what also helps is the fact that when you get personas like this, you can actually take, you know, because it all maps back to the data. You can also impanel focus groups around the different personas and put things in front of them and you will have anticipated if we've done our job correctly, and you know, everyone's thinking empathetically, we'll know what a john will say, we'll know what a Susan will say, you know, we'll know what Anthony will will like and won't like and you we see it time and time again, we go through focus groups, that this stuff actually gets kind of born out. And again, you know, I think that getting back to this slide, I mean important is the reason that that kind Comfort and reassurance is important is that this is only part of the thing. Empathy is only the first part of the process, you know, um, you know, just like gay people, we tend to think of the personas as really great portraits of people. They're really wonderful pictures. But pictures aren't people, people move and live and pass your time. And so for what we what we wind up doing then is we wind up trying to put these personas in motion. And you know, the way people think that's the second workshop. Yeah, the second workshop. And so for the the next workshop, what we do is we actually bring them into this, this, you know, with this understanding that we need to account for their experience over time, you know, and how they come in contact with the organization, and how they touch the organization, and how the organization kind of reconnects with them back. You know, everybody talks about touch points, but these are actually now in terms of what's what's really being exchanged in these touch points. Hilary Marsh So I wanted to shortcut that as now that we know who Susan is, what does she want from us now that Yeah, who the who these audiences are to really articulate and spend time thinking about and documenting what they want from us? What's the bright line? What would make it amazing, all of that? Esteban Gonzalez I think the thing that's really important to know here, and and also to keep in mind is that what they want, also evolved because it's a journey. I mean, we all do this, we all deal with this kind of stuff, because it's a journey, what they want at various stages of the, of that journey of that pathway or multiple pathways isn't always the same. So we might want to dazzle them, really at the beginning, because that's what kind of people that they are, whereas we need to be really kind of sustaining and comforting later on when they have a problem. So what the nice thing is about, you know, this particular framework or this particular way of dealing with things is that we're able to kind of chart that thing out To see, well, what are the inflection points in that relationship? And actually, that's the most important word. So what we really are focusing on is, well, what is that relationship now that we have empathy for human, we can understand the relationship that's going on between that person and the organization. And what we do is we then kind of brainstorm again, and we try to understand really, what are the what are the aspects of that journey? What are the key, those key inflection points and we're able to ask them questions, you know, like the ones here, you know, and because people now first of all, they're really used to writing a post, it's, and second of all, because they know these people, they've named them they've developed affection for them and an understanding for them, you know, they can give much richer and much more immediate responses and make conversations that are much more kind of meaningful to the organization than they would have been able to before. So, I'm on the next slide. I mean, basically, this is this is where we wind up when you add me empathy and experience together you get a VIP except this time, it's really a very important persona. Hilary Marsh Because it name Esteban Gonzalez Was said at the top it says Francesca, and I have to throw in a dog because I have a few cats in here. So you know, gotta be gotta be fair, gotta be fair. So they get used. And, you know, Hilary Marsh so nothing is about personas and is that they need a champion, and they need and they need to be used. And so this is a picture of life size cutouts at the National Association of Realtors of the personas that we had, and every time so I was the website director and every time some department came over and said, okay, we need a new section on the website for this or we need a new thing for that or, or we want to have walking talking people across the bottom of the screen, I would say. So we know that Susan on the left is not that comfortable with technology. Anthony on the right is, uh, you know, he wants it now and he wants a quick and he wants it small and short. Does that really serve either of those audiences? No. Oh, well, so then No, I think we're not going to go forward with that. And they were visible and they were really I'm able to be sustained because of that. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah, I tend to think about, you know, this was great that you you did that in the organization. I thought that was like a really awesome way to kind of have the conversation. When I talk to clients and you know, people doing this, I tend to say, look, if you can imagine having a dinner party, where you know, after a few drinks, you really started talking about things, honestly, who would be the four people that you would invite, that would just give it to you the way that they saw it, whether that was, you know, right or wrong, that you would really want to take, you know, to get get the temperature on anything like that. Hilary Marsh So this was one that we worked on. Gosh, maybe six, eight months ago together. And this is an example of the persona on the left and the journey map basically on the right. And this journey map is different than a lot of the marketing focus journey ones. This is not a funnel, this is a, an experience process. So relationship. Yes, good, thank you. But I want to show you what one of the what this client happened to happen to do with it. So this is an insurance company that insures various kinds of schools. And this was a particular person in a particular role at a particular size organization that they serve. So this is what they did. Jason Hi, I'm Jason, and I'm tossing around in a sea of details, any of which could be the iceberg that sinks the ship. I'm a 39 year old Director of Human Resources at a medium size University in Portland, Oregon. My partner and I have one child at work. I'm a firefighter managing a diverse set of issues and constituents juggling a lot of responsibility. I'm very driven and ambitious and continue to learn daily. I don't like not having an answer for my colleagues. I want our employees to feel safe and secure working here. I get frustrated with divisiveness among staff and employees posting about gripes online or not completing compliance training. I care about preventing major issues through thoughtful training and implementation of well informed best practices. I also care about our institution's ability to attract the best talent in a competitive marketplace. I spend my time researching employment issues that could affect our institution through online training, claim studies and case studies on relevant issues. at home. I enjoy staying active I love biking and rowing. I want to be perceived as a people innovator and campus leader. I strive to keep my team aligned with our strategic plan and goals. I care deeply about my growing family and want to save for my kids future and ultimately further my education to move up the ranks at a larger institution. The university president is less concerned with managing risks and more concerned with finance. I fear for all potential catastrophes from a faculty molestation scandal to serial harassment by a faculty member an EEOC audit or a title nine lawsuit. I don't know everything about risk management that I'd like to. I want to feel like YUI makes my job easier. I want easy ways to integrate risk management best practices at my institution to better position us to move from risk management to risk resilience. I want information informed by us unique position, not similar materials that I'm already getting from Schirmer Koopa HR. I don't want to feel like just another client. I need a knowledgeable available point of contact but personalized responses My questions and requests for advice. With today's media climate, bringing workplace harassment and other scandals to the forefront of people's minds, I want to know that our insurance will back us up and help me think proactively with putting out fires. Jason Hi, I'm Joanne. Hilary Marsh All right. Sorry, video doesn't do that. So from a content strategy perspective, right, there's so many things in there that are going to help us and really help them use this information. First of all, they created it. They they took this persona and they wanted to introduce it to the staff by the rest of the staff. By making this introduction video. Some other times I've just created a script. And like when we had the life size cutouts, I wrote up a short script for each of them that are different. People read, which was helpful in itself. But for this one, you know, we know that he's interested in a lot of issues so we can create content about those. We know that he, he's ambitious. So he wants a chance to shine, he wants a an opportunity to show how smart he is and how knowledgeable he is to his boss, and the company's content can help him do that. So this is why is he reading that content? Why is he using that surface service? Why does he care about that offering? And why does he wanted from this organization? And we have answers to all of those questions through the persona and through that video. Yeah. Esteban Gonzalez So let's, let's talk switch and talk about outcomes for a little bit. Because, you know, the truth is, is that, you know, how, where's the proof essentially, you know, what, how do we know all of this We've told you a little bit about the process. But let's talk a little bit about what we feel like the benefits are really for this. So how are the stakeholders benefiting from the process. So, essentially, for stakeholders, they walk away with a lot more insight into how their organization is perceived by real people, which is really essentially that outside in view, so they get a better idea of where they're strong, and where they're weak and could bolster some of the things that they do. They also have a better appreciation for the internal resources they have, but they just can't get out for some other reason and it can help them organizationally think of better ways to kind of channel the the, the way things are done. So it also helps them see their blind spots a little bit more clearly. lets them see their biases and see where they may be thinking a certain way because of history or because of misunderstanding around with the audiences are are just structures. Have have arisen in the organization, it helps them understand the uniqueness of their audiences. So they're, you know, they don't become those characters that we were talking about earlier. That is always kind of a, you know, a potential problem. You know, and, and what it does is it helps us, keep them clean and keep them actually looking at the people who are there. So they're real, yeah. But it keeps them to the point where they're constantly trying to be receptive about what's you know what's going on. At the same time, they really kind of gain an appreciation for how they can work together through the persona to create a little bit of tension around some of these issues, and then resolve them with something that's kind of a standard and aligned benchmark. Everybody can always come back to that persona. And that's what the persona thinks about things. So it creates a much easier and less painful way to To arrive at consensus A lot of times, you know, it's not personal. If it's, you know, if it's a Jason's opinion, like, you know, Jason, the persona we just showed you. And it's, it's not from another colleague or another department, it's not trying to encroach on anybody, it's actually a voice that is unique and clear, and not something that's interested. So it helps them to be able to talk about things that they may not have thought that were connected before. So things that they didn't think, you know, were alive, they can all of a sudden start to see how so many things are interdependent, and help, you know, help the company interact in terms of where the company interacts with its its audiences. So that's great, you know, for the stakeholders, but, you know, as you as a bunch of practitioners, you know, what's really in it for you? What is it that this can do for you, and, you know, what's the advantages to this approach, you know, thinking about how you might adopt this. So, you know, first of all, is you get Better personas I mean, you know and who's not after. After that, you know you get a you're you're able to speak to how insights are different from information, you're able to speak for how you know how you can be a critical asset in surfacing those biases and assumptions and in consistencies, you know, and personas now just aren't a UX step or a tool. They're an actual asset that the company or business can use. You know, another thing is, is that you get to be the smart person, you know, the person with a revolutionary new formula for something, you know, and you get to talk about how that formula is valuable across the organization and not just within the context of UX or UX issues. Hilary Marsh You as the UX person and as the audience champion in the audience advocate, really bring the audience in so that they live in the organization Hilary Marsh So that's a, that's a different role. Esteban Gonzalez So and then, you know, you get to be a catalyst. So you're not just the person who shows up with this amazing fish that you caught. And everybody's happy about that. You're the person who gets to come to the party and show everybody, this process to catch more awesome fish. And you know, in that sense, you become, your process becomes just as important, sometimes probably even more than the individual contributions. And they actually really provide a way for you to then kind of see your role in a larger kind of context. And you get to see how you can be the linchpin and to a certain extent, you can be the fulcrum for Hilary Marsh Well, there's 10 or 20 people who went through the process with you. So there's 10 or 20. You know, people who see the value and really know these audiences and can spread The word so it's not just you by yourself anymore either having either gone off and done it alone or gone off and hired, you know, or or done it as an outside consultant. It's really building that competency and the awareness and championship among a larger group of people inside the organization, right in every department at multiple levels, which I think is really important. So you're the linchpin with an army behind you already, Esteban Gonzalez Right. And as that linchpin, you really now are at the center of a process that begins to change attitudes and transform perceptions, about the way that your organization deals with audiences. So you really help people from shift their way of thinking, you know, to a site to a I think a decidedly better way of thinking, a decidedly more in touch way of thinking and even more, you get to have fun Doing it is it's not, it's always fun when you get to kind of talk about these kind of things and can bring them into kind of realistic play within the organization. So, you know, on the next page, we, there's, there's a quote and I'm gonna go ahead and read it because I love this quote, you know, the single tool that does the best job at spreading empathy throughout a business is the persona persona. And this is really a huge opportunity for IA, you know, Hilary Marsh it's a quote from Peter Marvel to many, many of you listening to this presentation, probably know, either personally, or certainly know his name. Esteban Gonzalez Right. And I think the thing that's really awesome is that it also kind of indicates really how important you can be and your process can be, you know, you can wind up being indispensable to that company's future. So, you know, Hilary Marsh Right. So there this this approach really instills a new set of sense of purpose, both in the among the The person who brought the approach in and all the people who went through it together, it enhances how the organization works. It helps people go beyond the silos that they live in and talk to each other know each other because they've gone through this process together, get used to the idea of collaboration get used to the idea of brainstorming together, and really see UX as part of their world also, and, and this kind of shared experience is transformative and really makes a difference. And so the big question that we want to end with is, is what empathy offers worth it for you? And I hope you'll find that the answer is yes. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah. So we will be but we will be taking questions you know, at at the time that is posted. But thanks again and you know, hopefully You find something really valuable in what we're talking about and have lots of questions for us in the q&a. Hilary Marsh Thank you so much for your time today. Esteban Gonzalez Thank you. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah. Hilary Marsh All right. Well, thank you. Esteban Gonzalez Yeah. Hilary Marsh All right. Well, thank you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai