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FIRST STEP

TEMPLATE PERSONAS FOR Open Climate Fellows

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FIRST STEP

Please make a copy

of this template

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FIRST STEP

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RESEARCH ABOUT ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS

Research who you think is your ideal type of user or organizations for your open knowledge project. For example you might:

Search Google or Social Media from your context to identify who is actively participating in volunteer activities around your topics
Reflect on the user research you have done so far for your project
Talk to other activists, organizers, or community leaders trying to communicate or act in your topic area

For example, if your project is to share climate information for a particular audience in your context: make sure you talk to otht er

What motivates people to participate in the communities effected by your project? How do you know?

What kind of communities do they participate in? How do you know?

FIRST STEP

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CREATING A DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IS THE AUDIENCE TRYING TO DO?

When

For example, most youth activists in the climate movement want to empower other people in their society. When creating open knowledge projects that benefit this audiences
For example, many amateur photographers are interested in helping the public see what they see when taking photos; an open knowledge project that includes documenting the climate crises needs

One of the most important parts of creating a persona is understanding what their personal goals are. By describing personal goals of an audience, you can design both better activities and communications to meet their needs.

To do this, you like need to find answers to the following questions:

SECOND STEP

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What audience do people in this network want to reach?

What action do participants take in networks that include your audience?

Why do they take these actions?

What would be persuasive for these audiences?

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IDENTIFYING A USER JOURNEY

The last important part of any persona is identifying important parts of a user’s journey. Depending on how you will use the persona, you might create different journey points. For example, in the Wikimedia movement’s Movement Organizer’s research: we focused on different transformative moments in their organizing experiences throughout their whole career; or for Wikiepdias New Editors research they focused on the various interactions with the wikis. For your project, describe the ideal journey that you hope your audience takes with the content from your projects.

For the sake of personas that for your projects, the important moments that you want to capture might include:

For your persona, we are going to create a simple journey focused on three parts:

THIRD STEP

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First exposure: what kind of needs or opportunities first introduce the audience for your project ?

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What were the first moments that someone will encounter your project? How will they learn about it?

What inspires the person to contribute to communication about your issue or public knowledge?

After they have used your project, what kinds of change do you want them to do in the world?

First deep engagement -- what kind of action will your audience take with your project to use it?

Feelings after participating - What feeling do you leave the participant feeling? How do they know they benefited from an open knowledge proejct?

Note that this is different from the examples we shared: we developed those personas for product development and internal work within the Wikimedia Foundation, we were exploring the experience folks have during specific editing events.

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Describe an imaginary first exposure to your project for the audience for your project ?

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Motivations

and behaviors

In this section describe what kinds of things this person does in their free time, why they want to participate in your project related to sustainability and climate change in your context.

To explore this, document the different parts of their fictional biography that inspire you about the audience.

Challenges

In this section describe the challenges you expect to have with participating, or recruiting them to take advantage of your project.

Problems can be existential (they don’t yet understand what Wikipedia is about) or they could be less complex (such as needed data for their internet connection).

First deep engagement -- describe an imaginary first situation where your audience engages your project to use it?

Search for an image of someone from your country in Wikimedia Commons

AUDIENCE TYPE

NAME

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COUNTRY

Languages:

Digital Skills:

What feeling do you leave the participant feeling? How do they know they benefited from an open knowledge proejct?

What goals does this audience have and how does your project help this audience achieve their goals?

Goals

In this section, describe what inspires this audience to participate in Wikimedia? Why would this individual want to participate? How would you know?

Catalysts

Has more characteristics similar to Elorm from Movement Organizers: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Movement_Organizers_Study.pdf&page=90

First interaction

First event

Feelings after participating

You can erase the explanation and use that space to create your own