Identify patterns to create your personas

The persona-creation process starts when you've completed your research and have collected data describing user behavior. To begin with, analyze data to identify users' characteristics or behavioral patterns they've demonstrated during user-research activities and group similar ones into clusters.

Gradually, you'll notice that some attributes are similar and can be merged together. Other attributes may appear too irrelevant to your product or service and can be eliminated. These similarities and differences can be based on:

• How users complete certain tasks
• How they find out about a product/service
• How they solve problems
• Their end goals and environments in which they usually interact with a product
• Motivations and pain points
• Demographics

Be specific when looking for patterns. For example, if your product helps project managers manage teams, you should pay attention to things like their typical weekday, tools they use when working, how many hours they usually work, and their team size.

During the next step, identify a few types of users and compare them to each other to ensure they do not share similar characteristics.

Once distinct roles emerge, enhance the characters with details like name, photo, gender, age, etc., to make them more realistic, believable, and memorable.