Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

[This definition from the Alzheimer's Society refers to people with dementia, but personas can of course be used to describe any group of people.]

Personas are fictitious characters developed to represent typical service users when organisations are looking to develop or improve services. They are a tool you can use to gather empathy and insights about the experiences of people with dementia. This can be used for service design.

PROS AND CONS

Useful for

- Rather than considering people who use your services by reference to characteristics such as ethnicity and age, personas focus on breaking down service users in terms of their needs, wants and preferences.

- They may be especially useful for
-- exploring very personal needs in a safe and less personal-seeming way.
-- considering the needs of smaller, specific groups of service users
-- developing empathy and insights to service user experience.

Disadvantages

- You need a facilitator for the process who is very familiar with the service user experience data and how to create personas.
- They are not real people.
- How accurate they are is limited by how rich a picture your service user data can provide and by the understanding of your service users of the people have who are creating them.
- They may be best used along with involvement, rather than instead of involvement, of people with dementia and carers.