One of the principal strategic design tools employed by design teams today is the persona. The persona has come a long way in the past few years and is being broadly accepted by business as a critical component to defining a business strategy for new product and service innovation. The reasons for this acceptance are clear: the best personas are being created from insights developed through a balanced effort of qualitative and quantitative research. Marketing stakeholders are finding that personas, aligned with their market segmentation, really bring to life the characteristics of customers they have become very familiar with over the years, in a very real and dynamic way. In addition, the methods for socializing personas within an organization make them relevant such that they become a readily referred tool for a wide range of business planning activities.

However, the value and use of personas can increase considerably when paired with another empathic design tool…the user or consumer journey. At its highest level, a consumer journey outlines the various stages in the lifecycle of a consumer’s interaction with a brand, from initial awareness through to long-term retention. At a practical level marketers plot the potential channels through which they can acquire, convert, and retain customer’s interest in their products, services, and experiences, both analog and digital. It is becoming increasingly attractive and complex to orchestrate an overall, holistic experience of the brand that communicates in a clear, consistent, on-brand fashion. Marketers have a great number and mix of potential customer touchpoints at their disposal, beyond the direct contact with the product or service. Ancillary experiences through digital touchpoints, such as search engines, social media, digital signage, etc call for a broader understanding of the possible destinations for target markets.

Personas allow marketers to evaluate their options for interaction through the lens of key personas, representing target market segments. When personas are mapped to consumer journeys, digital marketers can be more deliberate about the communication strategies they roll out across channels. For design teams conducting customer research it is important to investigate the broader digital space that target users interact with. Are they bloggers…lurkers or leaders? Do they attend venues with digital signage? How do they use social networks? How are they influenced by others online?  What web sites do they trust for actionable information? What web sites do they purchase products and services on? How do they use search engines? By investigating the answers to these questions designers can piece together insights into consumer’s current experience and how that can likely be stated as a prospective consumer journey over time and the key touchpoints that are likely to expose the consumer to a company’s product or service.

More and more digital designers are being enlisted to provide the insights and intelligence needed to strategize this open digital space. That’s good news for designers and good news for business!