Persona + Package Design

■ Significance & features

In community activities, ideas tend to run ahead without deciding “who is it for.” A plan “for everyone” ends up striking no one. Whether you make a video or hold an event, if you cannot see the face of the person you want to reach, both the content and the publicity become generic.

Another thing that tends to happen is a gap between what the makers “want to do” and what the receivers “are troubled by.” What you find interesting is not necessarily what the other person wants.

This tool is a method of concretely depicting the person you want to reach as one fictional individual = a persona, and, together, designing on a single sheet the form of value that answers that person’s troubles = a package. Give the persona a name, age, and role, through to their “own voice,” and write in the package a name, the value provided, the situation of use, and the main contents. Because you design “to whom” and “what” as a set, the axis of the plan connects on a single sheet.

You can have a generative AI draw the persona’s portrait or the package’s image. However, in principle you derive the contents (the troubles and the value) yourselves through interviews and observation. Use the AI as a tool for expression.

■ How to use

(When to use it)

You use this tool at the launch phase of a plan. Create it as a team when narrowing down “to whom to deliver” once ideas have come together, and when explaining the plan to stakeholders. It can also be used as a prelude to the journey map (practice guide “Journey Map: Basics”) that depicts the flow of the experience.

A template to fill in is provided in the worksheet / detailed explanation (“Persona + Package Design Worksheet”).

(Depicting the persona)

First depict two people you want to reach. One narrows your view, and increasing them too much from the start blurs the focus, so we recommend starting with two (you may increase them as the activity expands). The items are: name / affiliation and role / age / character / troubles and needs / background and cause / own voice.

There are two tricks. First, do not make it up from imagination alone; start from interviews with, and observation of, real people. Second, write the “own voice” as a line the person would actually say. When a voice is added, the individual gains warmth and becomes a shared yardstick within the team for “what would that person think.”

(Designing the package)

Design the value you deliver in a form that answers the persona’s troubles. The items are: name / overview / value provided / situation of use / main contents and features.

When writing, be conscious of writing the “value provided” in a form that answers the persona’s “troubles and needs.” You check this correspondence again at the checkpoints described later.

(Where generative AI comes in)

You can make the persona’s portrait or the package’s image with generative AI. Tell it the age, role, and atmosphere, and you get a shareable image in a few minutes. In fact, in classes using this format, many teams make images with AI.

Two cautions. Do not use photos of real people. And do not have the AI make even the contents of the troubles or the value. The principle is: contents from the field, appearance from the AI.

(Once done, check and third-party review)

Once written, inspect with the following three checkpoints.

・Consistency: within one sheet, is there no contradiction in the individual? And do the persona’s “troubles and needs” and the package’s “value provided” connect in a single line across the sheets

・Concreteness: does it stop at generalities like “interested in tourism”? Is it written to the point where that person’s actions and situations come to mind

・Clarity: is the age written as a range like “in their 20s”? Because a persona is one individual, decide the age as exactly one

And finally, show it to a third party outside the team (an instructor, a senior, the activity’s partner, etc.) and get a critical review. The biggest pitfall of a persona is being satisfied just by having drawn the image. The eyes of others—“does such a person really exist,” “would this person really want this”—free the team from its assumptions.

(Materials used)　*See the “Download” materials

The guidance (“Persona + Package Design Guidance”) is a participant-facing document to hand to the members of your activity. It walks through the steps of how to make it, tips for filling it in, and example prompts for generative AI, in slide form.

The worksheet / detailed explanation (“Persona + Package Design Worksheet”) is a PowerPoint fill-in template. In the table for two personas and a package, filled-in examples are written in beforehand. Rewrite them to use.

■ Track record & usefulness

The persona is a standard method widely used in the fields of service design and marketing. From corporate product planning to government service design, it is used as a starting point for “thinking from the user’s standpoint,” and becomes the foundation (the protagonist) for various frameworks, beginning with the journey map. This guide combines that persona with the “design of the value to deliver (the package)” into a format that lets you fix the plan’s axis on a single sheet.

This format is used in the APU course “Field Practicum” to plan the projects of each team partnering with the community. Each team compiled two personas and a package onto one sheet, and many teams used generative AI to create portraits and images. With “to whom to deliver” settled, the subsequent planning of steps and the content of publicity become concrete.

■ Next steps

(To the flow of experience)

Once the persona is decided, try depicting, with a journey map (practice guide “Journey Map: Basics”), the flow of experience from that person encountering the plan, to using it, to being satisfied. The role division is: the persona defines “whose story it is,” and the journey map depicts “the flow of that person’s experience.”

(Bringing it closer to reality)

A persona is not something you make once and are done with. When you obtain actual reactions from the other party in interviews or the main event, rewrite the persona with those learnings. The more times you repeat it, the closer the fictional individual comes to the real user.

■ Glossary

・Persona: the person you want to reach, depicted concretely as one fictional individual with a name and even an age. A tool for thinking toward “this person” rather than “everyone”

・Package design: in this guide, not the packaging of a product, but a single-sheet design of the bundle of value delivered to the persona (name, value provided, situation of use, contents). This idea is also used within the inception deck (a practice guide)

・Needs: what the other party wants. Often hidden behind the troubles the person is aware of; dig into it in the “background and cause” field

・Own voice: a line the persona would actually say. It gives the individual warmth and creates a shared image within the team