Step 5 | Assumption Personas

In this step, you will create a few Assumption Personas. Think of these as brief dossiers representing imaginary stakeholders.

Look over the list of assumptions of cultural values you made in Step 4. Next, take one of your assumptions from each of these dimensions and group them together into a persona. Go ahead and give this persona a proper name. You might even add an avatar to help you imagine what this persona might look like. If you’ve assigned any demographics to the personas, ask yourself what led you to these conclusions.

Repeat this until you’ve grouped all your assumptions into several individual personas. Put these personas in a safe place. In subsequent steps, you will validate or invalidate these assumptions. During this process, you may find that some assumptions turn out to be correct and others not—and that’s okay! It’s better to learn about your preconceptions during the research phases than after your design has been implemented.

Think of this as a fly trap for preconceptions. The purpose of this is to put all your assumptions in one place so you can quarantine, dissect, and disrupt them.