Audi Persona Creation

At the beginning of the engagement we knew that the best way to gain an understanding of our audience was to conduct a customer profiling exercise to see how Audi’s business objectives matched their customers actions and expectations.

The output of this exercise was a set of personas that helped us prioritise features, content and functionality.

Here’s a brief overview of what I did…

First things first, we needed data

It’s important to note that personas aren’t created out of thin air; if they were, we may as well be designing for someones imaginary friend. This meant that we needed data!

We got this by talking to people who had just, or were in the process of, purchasing a new or used car.

We followed a recruit loose and grade on a curve approach. The only thing we stipulated was that they must have considered Audi during their search; this was to ensure that no-one we spoke to was brand averse.

Analysing the data

Once the interviews were complete, the analysis could begin.

First came the single-case analysis. We combed through the interview transcripts, making a note of every time a participant referred to a specific activity or we identified behaviour traits, wants or frustrations.

The next step was cross-case analysis. This is where we looked for similar behaviour between participants and grouped these together. Seeing where participants were similar emphasised where they were different and it’s those differences that formed the basis of our personas.

Introducing the Personas

The goal was to have as few personas as possible, but as many as it took to express the unique behaviour patterns and goals we observed. We ended up with 3.

It’s worth noting that few people will be a 100% match and it’s expected that you will switch between them as time goes by, but these definitely proved beneficial in our decision making, plus they highlighted areas where we could add value.