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Persona Activities

Several people work around a table with magazines, scissors, glue sticks, and markers, cutting out images and assembling a collage or vision board on large sheets of paper.

Personas are fictional characters created as stand-ins or avatars for the different types of individuals that may use or be impacted by a product.

Personas allow for the development of a deeper understanding of users’ needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals by allowing you to empathize with another’s reality and point of view. As such, it is important to identify and expand different user characteristics in order to make the personas as rooted in reality as possible. To help get you started with using the personas for ideation purposes, we have created a page dedicated to various games, activities, and workshop agendas. We encourage you to try these out, and reach out to us with any questions or suggestions. Please also be sure to share any outputs from your persona design activities with us!

Activities

These engaging exercises are designed to help develop personas, add depth to their characters, and use them as avatars and proxies in various design-related activities. These can be used independently or in conjunction with others in workshop and brainstorming sessions. We will update this section with new and different activities, and encourage you to reach out to us with any suggestions on what you would like to see featured here.

Cards

A profile illustration for Supportive Sibling Sarah shows her motivations and barriers in caring for younger siblings, with a simple blue line portrait, text details, and stakeholder group diagram at the bottom right.

Persona Cards

The persona cards are sorted by stakeholders across the life stages and can be used in multiple ways across activities, games, and workshops. They are analog versions of what we feature on the website, but encourage you to view these cards as the foundation for most if not all persona-related exercises. Click on the buttons below to access the files to download each deck, as well as instructions for a variety of card-based activities using them.

USERS
BENEFICIARIES
INTERMEDIARIES
INSTRUCTIONS

Design a Male Contraceptive

A worksheet titled Male Contraceptive Initiative Design Thinking Tools & Activities with prompts about contraceptive ideas, including method, delivery, efficacy, side effects, cost, and other considerations, plus spaces for two sketches.

Design a Male Contraceptive

This exercise is just as the name suggests: an opportunity to design your own male contraceptive. When working with personas, it’s a great opportunity to empathize and to create your design to meet their needs. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

Design a Persona

Blank personas worksheet from the Male Contraceptive Initiative, featuring sections for a picture, name, brief biography, interests, aspirations, hopes, fears, stakeholder group, and life stage.

Design a Persona

This exercise is useful both for creating new personas and in adding further depth to existing ones. You step into the shoes of your persona to speculate about what their lives are like, what their hopes and dreams are, along with their fears and challenges. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

Persona Role Playing

An illustrated user persona titled Supportive Sibling Sarah details her motivations and barriers in supporting younger siblings. Includes profile text, stakeholder group, and a simple icon of a smiling woman with long hair.

Persona Role Playing

When thinking about designing any product or service, it’s critical to consider as many different perspectives users may have, along with an understanding of the potential drivers of these viewpoints. As such, envisioning how different personas interact with the world around them and the people in their lives is a great empathy-building activity. We have created a set of suggested activities for using the Persona Cards in this way. Click on the buttons below to access the files to download each deck, as well as instructions for a variety of card-based activities using them.

USERS
BENEFICIARIES
INTERMEDIARIES
INSTRUCTIONS

Empathy Mapping

Empathy mapping worksheet titled Male Contraceptive Initiative with blank sections for Challenges, Opportunities, and a large empty space for mapping thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Male Contraceptive Initiative logo in top right corner.

Empathy Mapping

The empathy mapping exercise as we have designed it allows for focusing specifically on male contraception and how it impacts the persona you are working with. It provides an opportunity to speculate on the impact the lack of male methods of contraception has on them, as well as what the ideal future with more male contraceptive methods will mean to them. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

Scenarios

A worksheet from the Male Contraceptive Initiative reads, Your partner wants you to take on more family planning responsibilities, in bold text. The MCI logo appears in the top right corner.

Scenarios

Envisioning and even acting out how a persona could react to particular experiences offers a rich opportunity to speculate about how a particular product or service might meaningfully address the situation. Doing so creates an opportunity for designers and product developers to contextualize their interventions in more meaningful ways. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

Storyworld

A worksheet titled Male Contraceptive Initiative: Design Thinking Tools & Activities – Storyworld Worksheet with blank spaces labeled Headline and Article for users to fill in. MCI logo is in the top right corner.

Storyworld

Narrative stories help frame personas in real world situations, and provide rich opportunities to imagine how different personas could respond or react to the same situations. It is a way of translating all of the different qualities and information developed about a persona into a cohesive reality. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

Do you have suggestions for additional activities? Please reach out to us via the button below and share your thoughts today!

SUGGEST AN ACTIVITY

Games

​These interactive games were developed to help reinforce people’s understanding of user personas, while also providing opportunities to step into their shoes and look at the world through their eyes while thinking about and evaluating various aspects of male contraception. As with the activities, these games can be used independently or in conjunction with others in workshop and brainstorming sessions. We will update this section with new and different games, and encourage you to reach out to us with any suggestions on what you would like to see featured here.

​Furthering Method Knowledge

Line drawing of a nasal spray bottle with dots above it, indicating spray. Text reads: Male Contraceptive Initiative, Nasal Spray, and includes the Male Contraceptive Initiative logo in the top right corner.

Furthering Method Knowledge Card Game

Developing an understanding of user preferences relative to other considerations is critical to product development as it affords a sense of how a particular user prioritizes different attributes and features. This card game puts plates in the persona’s shoes as they navigate through decisions regarding contraception delivery mechanisms, potential side effects, and duration of efficacy. Click on the buttons below to access the files to download each deck, as well as instructions for suggested activities using them.

DELIVERY METHODS
DURATION OF EFFICACY
SIDE EFFECTS
INSTRUCTIONS

Persona Charades

An illustrated user persona titled Supportive Sibling Sarah details her motivations and barriers in supporting younger siblings. Includes profile text, stakeholder group, and a simple icon of a smiling woman with long hair.

Persona Charades

Stepping into a persona and playing it as a role like an actor is a fun way of bringing the character to life, while also allowing an opportunity to get a sense of how an individual could behave in or react to certain prompts or situations. It allows for a persona to be personified, which is invaluable in utilizing these avatars as proxies for actual users in real world settings. Click on the buttons below to access the files to download each deck, as well as instructions for a variety of card-based activities using them.

USERS
BENEFICIARIES
INTERMEDIARIES
INSTRUCTIONS

Persona Memory

A worksheet titled Male Contraceptive Initiative Design Thinking Tools & Activities shows 30 illustrated faces of diverse people in a grid, each within a dashed-line rectangle. The MCI logo appears in the top right corner.

Persona Memory Matching Game

Keeping all the different personas and their various perspectives and attributes straight can be a challenge. In an effort to address this in a fun and engaging way, we suggest incorporating variations of the childhood game Memory. In this way, it becomes a bit easier to get to know the personas and commit each to one’s memory. Click on the buttons below to download the worksheet, as well as instructions for some suggested ways of using it.

DOWNLOAD WORKSHEET
INSTRUCTIONS

​Do you have suggestions for additional games? Please reach out to us via the button below and share your thoughts today!

SUGGEST A GAME
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