What are Learner Personas? with Danielle Wallace

This season, we’re diving into learner personas. To kick things off, Danielle Wallace (Chief Learning Strategist, Beyond the Sky) joins us to define what a learner persona is and why they matter for your L&D strategy. Listen to the 30-minute conversation to learn: What a learner persona is What resources you need to build effective […]

This season, we’re diving into learner personas. To kick things off, Danielle Wallace (Chief Learning Strategist, Beyond the Sky) joins us to define what a learner persona is and why they matter for your L&D strategy.

Listen to the 30-minute conversation to learn:

  • What a learner persona is
  • What resources you need to build effective learner personas
  • How Danielle has leveraged learner personas to increase program adoption across organizations
Transcript
Tom Moriarty:

Welcome.

Tom Moriarty:

You made it to the secret society of success.

Tom Moriarty:

In this not so secret podcast, we interview L&D changemakers about how they approach the

Tom Moriarty:

evolving corporate environment and cultivate their own careers.

Tom Moriarty:

From their stories, we hope you find lessons and inspirations to make yourself, your

Tom Moriarty:

people, and your organization successful.

Tom Moriarty:

For our second season, we polled you, our

Tom Moriarty:

listeners, to find out what you wanted to hear about.

Tom Moriarty:

You chose learner personas.

Tom Moriarty:

So now we're on a mission to find out from

Tom Moriarty:

experts the answers to your questions, like, what is a learner persona?

Tom Moriarty:

How do you create an effective persona? And most importantly, why are personas a

Tom Moriarty:

strategic investment for L&D teams? In this first episode, you'll hear from

Tom Moriarty:

Danielle Wallace from Beyond the Sky.

Tom Moriarty:

She'll give us an overview of what a learner

Tom Moriarty:

persona is and why they matter to the entire L and D team, not just instructional designers.

Tom Moriarty:

My favorite takeaway is how she used Mary, this persona she created, to increase overall

Tom Moriarty:

course adoption across an entire learner population.

Tom Moriarty:

Let's jump in so you can hear what I mean.

Tom Moriarty:

Just to start, if you could introduce the

Tom Moriarty:

audience to yourself.

Danielle Wallace:

So I'm Danielle, and I head up a great team of instructional designers and

Danielle Wallace:

learning strategists at Beyond the Sky custom Learning, where we work with local and global

Danielle Wallace:

clients.

Danielle Wallace:

But our real passion is just creating training

Danielle Wallace:

that sticks.

Danielle Wallace:

And that's why learner personas become so

Danielle Wallace:

important, because all this fuels together for really effective learning solutions.

Tom Moriarty:

That's awesome.

Tom Moriarty:

I appreciate that.

Tom Moriarty:

And if I remember correctly, too, because I think it'll likely dovetail nicely into our

Tom Moriarty:

discussion today on why those matter in the first place.

Tom Moriarty:

Before you started in learning development, you were also a marketing professional by

Tom Moriarty:

trading.

Danielle Wallace:

Yeah, that's my hidden secret that you revealed, Thomas.

Danielle Wallace:

That's my secret.

Danielle Wallace:

So, prior to this, I was in various marketing

Danielle Wallace:

leadership roles at PepsiCo and Procter and Gamble, where, amongst other things, I learned

Danielle Wallace:

different behaviors to change people's actions and attitudes and ignite and compel, maybe

Danielle Wallace:

buying things or maybe thinking about a product in a new way.

Danielle Wallace:

And now I have the privilege of doing and using those same techniques now for the forces

Danielle Wallace:

of good, to create moments where people can think about things differently and learn

Danielle Wallace:

things differently and have new skills and behaviors.

Tom Moriarty:

That's great.

Tom Moriarty:

So, yeah, for today's conversation, just

Tom Moriarty:

really to jump right in, I think what we love to get your perspective on, given your

Tom Moriarty:

marketing background and now your focus as a learning strategist for Beyond the Sky is

Tom Moriarty:

really, why do personas matter in the first place?

Tom Moriarty:

Why is this the new buzzword in the L and D space?

Tom Moriarty:

And why are persona so important?

Danielle Wallace:

Yes. And this is not a new buzzword for the marketing industry.

Danielle Wallace:

This is like trying to for a while, and that's because it works.

Danielle Wallace:

It not only makes training effective, but it shapes the entire training strategy.

Danielle Wallace:

It's hard to create a meaningful high impact course that has the right ignition of behavior

Danielle Wallace:

change that you want without that really thorough, deep understanding of the learner.

Danielle Wallace:

We've used learner personas to dramatically change not only the learning solution, the

Danielle Wallace:

learning delivery that is endeavored in that, for example, we recently were creating systems

Danielle Wallace:

training.

Danielle Wallace:

We all create systems training, but upon

Danielle Wallace:

looking at our learner persona, Mary, we realized, oh my gosh, Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

And then her other persona, Janice.

Danielle Wallace:

But Mary, she was 70 plus highly educated, but

Danielle Wallace:

wasn't used to the pace of change that we had within some of the systems she needed to do.

Danielle Wallace:

And it was only through the deep understanding of that persona that we were able to make some

Danielle Wallace:

pretty significant shifts in how the system training would roll out to her.

Danielle Wallace:

Realizing our initial initial approach without thinking of Mary was like, hey, it's

Danielle Wallace:

intuitive, just actually just do it.

Danielle Wallace:

Do it on your own.

Danielle Wallace:

And honestly, you and me, we could probably figure it out, but we are a different persona.

Danielle Wallace:

Upon understanding Mary, it was dramatic shift, and it works because now the learning

Danielle Wallace:

solution was tailored to Mary's needs and to achieve the desired performance outcomes from

Danielle Wallace:

Mary.

Tom Moriarty:

That's such an interesting example.

Tom Moriarty:

I think it's one I might go back to.

Tom Moriarty:

And have you unpack a little bit further for

Tom Moriarty:

the audience because the difference that made is you met

Tom Moriarty:

Mary where Mary was, not where you were.

Tom Moriarty:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

At the end of the day, if you want to make a change in someone's behavior, step one is you

Tom Moriarty:

better be where they are, but not where you think they are or where you are.

Tom Moriarty:

And then that's responsibility of the person who's trying to drive a change in behavior,

Tom Moriarty:

not the person whose behavior is being changed.

Tom Moriarty:

You mentioned very early on that marketing or product personas have been a thing for a

Tom Moriarty:

while.

Danielle Wallace:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

And I think that this concept of a learning persona in the L&D industry is

Tom Moriarty:

relatively new compared to how long the persona concept has been around in marketing.

Tom Moriarty:

Are they different? Is a learning persona in the L and D space

Tom Moriarty:

vastly different than what you might see or create for the purposes of marketing a

Tom Moriarty:

product?

Danielle Wallace:

That's a great question.

Danielle Wallace:

So when I look back to my marketing days and

Danielle Wallace:

then the personas I see now as well, from both marketing and just a pure learning standpoint,

Danielle Wallace:

this function is the same.

Danielle Wallace:

The outcome is the same in terms of being able

Danielle Wallace:

to make better decisions and shape a better strategy.

Danielle Wallace:

What the differences are is often the inputs that go in.

Danielle Wallace:

So within the marketing world, my budget was a lot bigger.

Danielle Wallace:

I had much richer data.

Danielle Wallace:

I did, and it fueled some more data driven

Danielle Wallace:

insights about my persona.

Danielle Wallace:

I see the same thing now within organizations

Danielle Wallace:

that are fortunate to be able to leverage their persona from their marketing department

Danielle Wallace:

because they may be selling their courses to external clients.

Danielle Wallace:

And they also have the benefit of not just rich data, but also the visual accompaniments

Danielle Wallace:

to really bring this persona to life.

Danielle Wallace:

Visual aesthetics of what the actual page

Danielle Wallace:

looks like, or the pictures or the mannequin or however it's brought to life.

Danielle Wallace:

But the functions of it is the same.

Danielle Wallace:

It still allows us to make better decisions,

Danielle Wallace:

to shape our strategy, to make nuanced decisions as well.

Danielle Wallace:

The differences that we as learning professionals need to do is we need to, in

Danielle Wallace:

consequence, fill in some of those gaps which we do anyhow in learning and development, make

Danielle Wallace:

some educated assumptions to be able to connect the dots so our persona is meaningful

Danielle Wallace:

and useful.

Tom Moriarty:

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Tom Moriarty:

So at the end of the day, you're trying to

Tom Moriarty:

drive towards the same outcome.

Tom Moriarty:

Some of the inputs and the ability to maybe

Tom Moriarty:

use as many resources to drive those inputs are a little bit different.

Tom Moriarty:

I'd love to go a little deeper into starting with the inputs and then ultimately the

Tom Moriarty:

outputs and how you use the outputs.

Tom Moriarty:

So starting with the inputs, how do you build

Tom Moriarty:

a learner persona? What inputs are you looking for?

Danielle Wallace:

Yeah, so within the learning development context, we would start off with

Danielle Wallace:

grabbing data.

Danielle Wallace:

So qualitative things you could see or get

Danielle Wallace:

from talking to people, and quantitative data, which is the numbers, maybe that's from your

Danielle Wallace:

LMS or for your HR information systems.

Danielle Wallace:

It's a combination of data gathering.

Danielle Wallace:

I personally recommend a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.

Danielle Wallace:

For example, pairing the information from the demographics that you get in your LMS with

Danielle Wallace:

focus groups or observational interviews where you are in the workspace, observing how people

Danielle Wallace:

interact and don't interact.

Danielle Wallace:

I've had some of my richest learner persona

Danielle Wallace:

creation with that combination.

Danielle Wallace:

I got the facts and then I've accompanied it

Danielle Wallace:

with qualitative insights.

Danielle Wallace:

It really shed light on what some of the

Danielle Wallace:

insights were that weren't just strictly gleaned from the numbers themselves.

Danielle Wallace:

So the whole point is just as rich basis of data.

Tom Moriarty:

That's great.

Tom Moriarty:

What are some of the key pieces of

Tom Moriarty:

information, the table stakes, if you will, that you would look for?

Tom Moriarty:

Let's say you guys are consulting for an organization.

Tom Moriarty:

They're like, hey, help me build a learner persona for this initiative.

Danielle Wallace:

What are the must have beyond the demographics?

Danielle Wallace:

And the whole idea of a learner persona is that it is beyond the demographics.

Danielle Wallace:

So with that, I will look to the motivations.

Danielle Wallace:

So gleaning insights, whether through a

Danielle Wallace:

quantitative or qualitative data about what is motivating that employee to do their job, what

Danielle Wallace:

is their motivations, attitude toward training?

Danielle Wallace:

Where are they taking the actual course? Is their perceptions of their workplace

Danielle Wallace:

themselves one conducive to supporting an environment of growth?

Danielle Wallace:

All these little aspects of it, those motivations and attitudes coupled with some of

Danielle Wallace:

the technological items where they're most likely to be doing their courses, let's say

Danielle Wallace:

it's a course.

Danielle Wallace:

Is it on their mobile phone?

Danielle Wallace:

Is it on the go? What is their day in the life look like?

Danielle Wallace:

Those are all pieces that come into play.

Danielle Wallace:

So one can weigh the pros and cons of

Danielle Wallace:

realizing, okay, when I'm designing a solution eventually, but at least to complete that

Danielle Wallace:

persona, I'm gathering the right information.

Danielle Wallace:

An easy way of going about this is to think

Danielle Wallace:

from, okay.

Danielle Wallace:

In the day of a life, Mary wakes up first

Danielle Wallace:

thing in the morning.

Danielle Wallace:

And what does she do?

Danielle Wallace:

Well, actually, she wakes up slowly, and then by 10:00 A.m., she's sort of puttering around

Danielle Wallace:

the house.

Danielle Wallace:

She's had her coffee, and then she's starting

Danielle Wallace:

to check in on her email.

Danielle Wallace:

Her persona, when she realized the extraction

Danielle Wallace:

of her life is quite different than you or I might have.

Danielle Wallace:

And it's understanding that the entire day and then how her workday is fitting in really

Danielle Wallace:

drives the richness of that persona.

Tom Moriarty:

That's great.

Tom Moriarty:

I love the example of the day in a life

Tom Moriarty:

exercise.

Tom Moriarty:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

It's really leveraging as much empathy as you can to be able to put yourself in someone

Tom Moriarty:

else's shoes.

Tom Moriarty:

And it gets into capturing, like you said

Tom Moriarty:

earlier, data points that may just exist in your LMS or in your HR management system.

Tom Moriarty:

Like, what is the age, what is the sex? Where are these people located?

Tom Moriarty:

What devices do they have access to? What company devices or personal devices that

Tom Moriarty:

they have access to that they might those are more kind of probably simply capture things.

Tom Moriarty:

But I think the emphasis on using empathy to understand a day in the life, understand the

Tom Moriarty:

motivations, is what I'm hearing can really round out to create a really rich, meaningful

Tom Moriarty:

persona is what it sounds like.

Danielle Wallace:

Because ultimately, at the end of the day, you want to be thinking, this

Danielle Wallace:

is a person.

Danielle Wallace:

It's not a literal real person by any means,

Danielle Wallace:

but you want the richness of the data that fuels it and then how it's manifested through

Danielle Wallace:

visuals, mannequin, whatever, you want that to feel like it is a real person.

Danielle Wallace:

So at every turn you could think, oh, what would Mary think?

Danielle Wallace:

Would Mary understand this jargon? Does this make sense for Mary?

Tom Moriarty:

Yeah, that makes total sense, right?

Tom Moriarty:

And that empathy probably allows you to ask that question in a deeper way, I would

Tom Moriarty:

imagine, right.

Tom Moriarty:

It makes it a little bit more real.

Tom Moriarty:

So you just started to jump there, but how do you use them?

Tom Moriarty:

Right? So we talked about inputs.

Tom Moriarty:

Now let's talk about outputs.

Tom Moriarty:

You've got Mary.

Tom Moriarty:

You've created Mary.

Tom Moriarty:

This persona that you shared earlier in your

Tom Moriarty:

systems training, I guess unpack a little bit further for us how the persona itself is a

Tom Moriarty:

tool that you apply to your overall learning strategy, whether it be delivery, content

Tom Moriarty:

design, et cetera.

Danielle Wallace:

Once the persona is brought to life.

Danielle Wallace:

In this case, Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

We brought Mary to life through images, which

Danielle Wallace:

many people do in other organizations.

Danielle Wallace:

We've had a mannequin that was in the

Danielle Wallace:

marketing world itself.

Danielle Wallace:

So she was there and just present with that

Danielle Wallace:

ever pervasive feeling of Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

It allows you to make decisions.

Danielle Wallace:

So at every turn, you're thinking from the start, we do this in every course, actually.

Danielle Wallace:

Would Mary understand this jargon? Is this approach suitable for Mary's needs?

Danielle Wallace:

We'll fit into Mary's work environment and Mary's life.

Danielle Wallace:

So right up from the start and with all our stakeholder alignment, we were able to align

Danielle Wallace:

on some pretty dramatic decisions.

Danielle Wallace:

In this case of the systems training, we were

Danielle Wallace:

rolling out massive training that had a high impact on the organization and a high training

Danielle Wallace:

component that went with it.

Danielle Wallace:

We had two personas.

Danielle Wallace:

One was our persona for the full time employee, university educated, technically

Danielle Wallace:

savvy.

Danielle Wallace:

We have a whole list of her media habits and

Danielle Wallace:

motivations.

Danielle Wallace:

What I wanted to focus on, though, was a

Danielle Wallace:

persona for Mary, because it was through that understanding up front and through our past

Danielle Wallace:

meetings and our past sessions that our stakeholders were aligned on, okay, this is

Danielle Wallace:

what motivates Mary and this is what frustrates Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

And Mary is really influential, actually.

Danielle Wallace:

So we found a way to create a different

Danielle Wallace:

learning solution that accommodated her needs.

Danielle Wallace:

So more specifically, rather than the other

Danielle Wallace:

solution for other persona, which was systems intuitive, so here's some job aids like you're

Danielle Wallace:

fine.

Danielle Wallace:

And they were.

Danielle Wallace:

But with Mary, regardless if it's intuitive or not, the feeling she wanted and the support

Danielle Wallace:

she got, we supported her through live question and answer sessions and sessions

Danielle Wallace:

where we were available to provide her.

Danielle Wallace:

Almost like an Office

Danielle Wallace:

Hours so she could work and try and go through all the activities that we had for her to

Danielle Wallace:

learn the system on her own while somebody was there trying to mimic in a virtual environment

Danielle Wallace:

the hand holding, for lack of a better word, that was so important for a persona.

Danielle Wallace:

This is the things that really made her learning stick and provided her the right

Danielle Wallace:

environment, the right supportive environment for this training experience.

Danielle Wallace:

So the end result of that is just a more effective learning solution that really

Danielle Wallace:

dramatically shaped our learning strategy.

Tom Moriarty:

I appreciate all the detail.

Tom Moriarty:

There was something very interesting to me in

Tom Moriarty:

that example you shared with Mary, but I'd like to unpack further because I believe it

Tom Moriarty:

could be compelling for the audience.

Tom Moriarty:

You mentioned Mary had a lot of influence.

Tom Moriarty:

Why was that important? Why was learning that important?

Danielle Wallace:

Oh, great point.

Danielle Wallace:

And this comes down to the fundamental aspect

Danielle Wallace:

of you create learner personas for sufficient enough population size or influence to warrant

Danielle Wallace:

your time investment.

Danielle Wallace:

Often I get asked, but I've got like 50

Danielle Wallace:

different types of employees in my warehouse.

Danielle Wallace:

Do I do 50 personas as well?

Danielle Wallace:

No. And we have many different subsets of Mary in this example.

Danielle Wallace:

But aggregated together, Mary became a powerful influence, not only because the role

Danielle Wallace:

that Mary represented, but also the stakeholder and the input.

Danielle Wallace:

So because mary was important was why we had to learn a persona with her and she

Danielle Wallace:

represented a sufficient enough population size.

Tom Moriarty:

Okay, that's a really interesting, I think, very tactical takeaway.

Tom Moriarty:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

So in a resource constrained environment,

Tom Moriarty:

which we know learning and development often is, sounds like it's going to be really

Tom Moriarty:

important to decide on the personas that you may create based on the authority and the

Tom Moriarty:

influence and the population size that is made up from that group.

Tom Moriarty:

I guess that would make up a persona.

Danielle Wallace:

Yeah, exactly.

Danielle Wallace:

And often it is population size.

Danielle Wallace:

In this case, it was both population size and influence.

Danielle Wallace:

But I could see the instance where you would create a persona against a smaller population

Danielle Wallace:

size because they are very important.

Danielle Wallace:

For example, if you have courses that are

Danielle Wallace:

going to executives as well as your general learner base, you would have a separate

Danielle Wallace:

learner persona for those executives who would have a lot of stakeholder influence and

Danielle Wallace:

probably different needs that you would need to cater to.

Tom Moriarty:

Yeah, it's interesting too, because I started to make a leap and I'm

Tom Moriarty:

curious if this was the real life experience you mentioned earlier.

Tom Moriarty:

The systems training that you were rolling out in the example is a high impact effort.

Danielle Wallace:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

This is organization wide.

Tom Moriarty:

It was deliverable that I would imagine a new

Tom Moriarty:

system usually has a high monetary investment to it.

Tom Moriarty:

So a deliverable that has probably a lot of visibility needs to be well coordinated and

Tom Moriarty:

well done across the organization.

Tom Moriarty:

Right.

Tom Moriarty:

Am I correct?

Danielle Wallace:

Absolutely.

Tom Moriarty:

Yeah. Where I was going with it, I'm not sure if this is the case, and it is.

Tom Moriarty:

You know, I'm curious to get your thoughts on it, but, you know, to me, that's what makes

Tom Moriarty:

that Mary persona so interesting is that if I had gone the path of just assuming there were

Tom Moriarty:

not two groups and the system was relatively intuitive and I could just roll it out with a

Tom Moriarty:

job aid.

Tom Moriarty:

While that may have worked and been successful

Tom Moriarty:

for 80% of my audience which might be a normally acceptable standard in this case

Tom Moriarty:

because of Mary and because of the influence Mary has within the organization.

Tom Moriarty:

Mary sounds like the person that if you can't create a training that will be effective for

Tom Moriarty:

her.

Tom Moriarty:

In this scenario, the perception of the

Tom Moriarty:

delivery of your training systems training has got to be negative because of her influence.

Danielle Wallace:

Absolutely.

Danielle Wallace:

The entire system training would be negative

Danielle Wallace:

if it doesn't work with Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

And that's where the richness of personas come

Danielle Wallace:

into play and being able to shape the entire strategy.

Danielle Wallace:

And it allows you to make decisions and trade offs.

Danielle Wallace:

So we have multiple personas within any organization, but it allows you to make

Danielle Wallace:

upfront proactive strategic decisions as to which persona may prioritize the others.

Danielle Wallace:

In a world of constraints and learning and development, we need to make priorities, but

Danielle Wallace:

often we're ill informed with which to do that or they come after the fact or not at all when

Danielle Wallace:

realizing upfront we needed to cater to Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

This was going to make or break whether or not

Danielle Wallace:

this system was successful and knowing upfront and creating the right structure up front that

Danielle Wallace:

was designed for Mary.

Danielle Wallace:

But honestly, we rolled it out to everybody so

Danielle Wallace:

everybody would actually be able to have the same benefits should they choose.

Danielle Wallace:

But because of that priority on Mary was what made the system launch successful.

Tom Moriarty:

I love that example.

Tom Moriarty:

I think it's such a good one.

Tom Moriarty:

I think there are so many nuances that really perfectly personify the importance of having

Tom Moriarty:

that right persona and how that enables you to make the right decisions to overall deliver

Tom Moriarty:

something that's effective.

Tom Moriarty:

Let me ask you another tactical question, I

Tom Moriarty:

guess.

Tom Moriarty:

What kind of support do you find is required

Tom Moriarty:

either within an organization or more tactically, what types of roles and

Tom Moriarty:

responsibilities do you need to have to actually start creating a learning persona?

Danielle Wallace:

So it's best ideally you do this within your own organization with your

Danielle Wallace:

own access to your employee data, but the quantitative and qualitative at play and

Danielle Wallace:

furthermore the management support within your learning and development structure or your

Danielle Wallace:

business and stakeholder structure.

Danielle Wallace:

So they actually buy in, participate, and then

Danielle Wallace:

use the personas.

Danielle Wallace:

So when you are making your business case,

Danielle Wallace:

people are already bought into the persona.

Danielle Wallace:

That's the ideal world within your own

Danielle Wallace:

organization with full stakeholders, and access to data.

Danielle Wallace:

That said, that's not always the case and certainly for us, we do this on behalf of our

Danielle Wallace:

clients and yet we still create personas for that.

Danielle Wallace:

We've had the fortune of being able to interview various people in and do focus

Danielle Wallace:

groups and as well as get some access to some numerical metrics, but at a more aggregate

Danielle Wallace:

level.

Danielle Wallace:

And using all that combination of qualitative

Danielle Wallace:

and quantitative data, we were able to put together our Mary, actually our persona that

Danielle Wallace:

I'm sharing with you today, what was a nice addition to that was also being able to have a

Danielle Wallace:

discussion and bring Mary to life by having an actual person within that population base

Danielle Wallace:

speak to us to help dimensionalize for the team.

Danielle Wallace:

What Mary is all about and what makes us all successful is having the support for data or

Danielle Wallace:

the ingenuity on your own to gather the data.

Danielle Wallace:

I speak to the ingenuity of the data because

Danielle Wallace:

when I was in the marketing world, I was going to be starting on doritos.

Danielle Wallace:

I was responsible for doritos prior to me starting work.

Danielle Wallace:

I decided to get out there and get a sense for my target population.

Danielle Wallace:

I only knew them by their demographics, 13 plus I did not know much about this

Danielle Wallace:

demographic.

Danielle Wallace:

I did not yet have the psychographic insights

Danielle Wallace:

at play, nor the rest of the data.

Danielle Wallace:

But through my own ingenuity, I started off

Danielle Wallace:

with went downtown, I went to different hangouts, I started talking to people just

Danielle Wallace:

hey, what are you listening to? Hey, what are you eating?

Danielle Wallace:

I just do my own creative ingenuity that I was able to glean this qualitative insights and

Danielle Wallace:

that cost nothing.

Danielle Wallace:

And it was rather fun and amusing.

Danielle Wallace:

I could not create a full persona on that because I didn't have enough data points and

Danielle Wallace:

it was just qualitative at that point in time.

Danielle Wallace:

But what that allowed me to do is when I had

Danielle Wallace:

more quantitative data, I was able to put everything into place.

Danielle Wallace:

And even that simple steps of that example made me a better marketer and made me make

Danielle Wallace:

better decisions because of that richness of understanding who that persona was.

Danielle Wallace:

So there's little things we can do, even on no budget and no support, while ideally in the

Danielle Wallace:

real world, we have the full support and the full access to data.

Tom Moriarty:

Yeah, that's a great example, and I love the Dorito story, right?

Tom Moriarty:

Because I think that you're right, at the end of the day, the opportunity to build out a

Tom Moriarty:

persona and understand your audience.

Tom Moriarty:

The easiest way to start with you just go talk

Tom Moriarty:

to them, right? Simply put, just go have a conversation with

Tom Moriarty:

people that you believe fit the audience that you're trying to serve and learn a little bit

Tom Moriarty:

about them through genuine asking questions.

Tom Moriarty:

I love that as a very practical takeaway,

Tom Moriarty:

right? If you don't have the full support of the

Tom Moriarty:

stakeholders, just get out there and ask some questions.

Tom Moriarty:

I love that.

Tom Moriarty:

If you were to prioritize three things.

Tom Moriarty:

Let's say I'm in the instructional design or I'm leading a learning and development

Tom Moriarty:

department, and I'm just serving an internal employee base.

Tom Moriarty:

Relatively resource constrained.

Tom Moriarty:

But I know personas are important.

Tom Moriarty:

I'm inspired by your Mary story.

Tom Moriarty:

I could see the impact already.

Tom Moriarty:

Maybe it resonates from a systems training I did that didn't go as well as I would have

Tom Moriarty:

liked.

Tom Moriarty:

What are the three things you would tell this

Tom Moriarty:

persona to go out and do tomorrow? To start implementing learning personas as

Tom Moriarty:

part of their overall strategy?

Danielle Wallace:

The three things I would do, I would say to make it very practical for your

Danielle Wallace:

audience, presuming there are many constraints at place, just so it's very broadly applicable

Danielle Wallace:

for everybody.

Danielle Wallace:

The first thing I would say is use the data

Danielle Wallace:

that's already there.

Danielle Wallace:

So within our HR is or within our LMS systems,

Danielle Wallace:

there is data that is already there.

Danielle Wallace:

It can be hard to get, so you will have to ask

Danielle Wallace:

or format Excel tables, but there is data already there.

Danielle Wallace:

So first we start off with data that's waiting to be used and analyze that.

Danielle Wallace:

Again, going back to the marketing world, that's the hidden thing.

Danielle Wallace:

People don't realize it's actually all analysis and from the deep understanding that

Danielle Wallace:

you get to see cool commercials or need interaction, but it's because it's on good

Danielle Wallace:

data.

Danielle Wallace:

The same thing should be true of learning and

Danielle Wallace:

development.

Danielle Wallace:

The second thing I would say is for anybody to

Danielle Wallace:

go out there on the floor, whatever the floor may be, to actually be able to observe your

Danielle Wallace:

learners and get a sense hopefully it had some quantitative data, but you can get a sense for

Danielle Wallace:

their aspirations or insights with permission.

Danielle Wallace:

You can also actually approach people, talk to

Danielle Wallace:

them, pre arranged focus groups, which are fantastic.

Danielle Wallace:

But even if in a world of complete constraints and you actually don't have approval for much,

Danielle Wallace:

you can still get down the floor, observe their environment, how people are interacting

Danielle Wallace:

and not interacting, and hopefully be able to ask questions to gain some insights and

Danielle Wallace:

understanding.

Danielle Wallace:

Because even right there, that helps you.

Danielle Wallace:

Now with quantitative data and qualitative data, be able to start to put together your

Danielle Wallace:

persona, which is my third tip, realizing this world of business constraints of quantitative

Danielle Wallace:

data, qualitative data, but it's likely incomplete because we're starting off without

Danielle Wallace:

all the full inputs.

Danielle Wallace:

Let's say the third tip I would say is be wary

Danielle Wallace:

and mindful when you are drawing inferences from the data, because we've already set it up

Danielle Wallace:

that the data is incomplete.

Danielle Wallace:

So avoid stereotypes, avoid your own bias of

Danielle Wallace:

how you are motivated or how you do things.

Danielle Wallace:

And when you're doing this, this should also,

Danielle Wallace:

of course, be with others.

Danielle Wallace:

So collectively, through your conversations,

Danielle Wallace:

you can be able to fill the missing gaps in the persona isn't a person.

Danielle Wallace:

It isn't one person that you observed on that shop floor.

Danielle Wallace:

It isn't one person that you interviewed.

Danielle Wallace:

The persona is an archetype.

Danielle Wallace:

It's an amalgamation of everything together.

Danielle Wallace:

So when you're ensuring that you're not making

Danielle Wallace:

assumptions using bias, keep that in mind.

Danielle Wallace:

This is just a fabrication of all the data in

Danielle Wallace:

a way to bring it to life.

Tom Moriarty:

I love that.

Tom Moriarty:

Those are three really good takeaways, right?

Tom Moriarty:

And one I'd actually like to unpack a little bit further.

Tom Moriarty:

But what I hear is there's data that already exists, use it.

Tom Moriarty:

That's your quantitative get out on the floor, observe, ask questions, talk to people.

Tom Moriarty:

There's your qualitative.

Tom Moriarty:

And then the last bit, which I do, I really

Tom Moriarty:

love this, and I'd like to ask one or two more questions about this one, because I don't

Tom Moriarty:

think we've covered this one yet.

Tom Moriarty:

As much is know what you don't know, right?

Tom Moriarty:

So it's almost realized that the data is incomplete and have an awareness to that.

Tom Moriarty:

Also have an awareness of things like biases, stereotypes, et cetera.

Tom Moriarty:

Can you share, Danielle, I'm Curious, any examples of that you've seen in your career of

Tom Moriarty:

how a bias can really influence the outcomes of a persona or the persona that you create,

Tom Moriarty:

and so maybe the unintended consequences of that?

Danielle Wallace:

Yeah, we've seen it happen in different organizations for a different

Danielle Wallace:

variety of fields.

Danielle Wallace:

One example is by age, they mean the call

Danielle Wallace:

center workers.

Danielle Wallace:

They are actually like 22 to 39.

Danielle Wallace:

That is their demographic.

Danielle Wallace:

And that is what's observed on the floor.

Danielle Wallace:

And that's what's observed in how people interact with each other.

Danielle Wallace:

But those are facts.

Danielle Wallace:

But what the inference to that was like

Danielle Wallace:

fleeting or low attention spans or some of the attributes that were assigned to that because

Danielle Wallace:

of observing people on their phones and such while on the floor.

Danielle Wallace:

But those weren't how do we get to low attention spans?

Danielle Wallace:

What data did we see that showed that? I don't see that.

Danielle Wallace:

And why are we designing a micro learning just because they have low attention spans?

Danielle Wallace:

Now it's like, wait a second, let's back up and not fill the gaps that we have with our

Danielle Wallace:

own inferences or own judgments on that.

Danielle Wallace:

So that's like a one practical example.

Danielle Wallace:

Maybe it is a good solution, but now we're painting and creating an entire persona that

Danielle Wallace:

our Aria is flighty.

Danielle Wallace:

Well, no, I don't think there's actually data

Danielle Wallace:

that actually back that up.

Danielle Wallace:

And the same can be true for many different

Danielle Wallace:

qualitative, especially assessments, because we are seeing the person.

Danielle Wallace:

So we keep in our mind the ethnographic tendencies of that person or the demographic

Danielle Wallace:

or age considerations of that person.

Danielle Wallace:

Again, the persona isn't a real person,

Danielle Wallace:

actually.

Danielle Wallace:

We're creating an archetype of that.

Danielle Wallace:

So be mindful of not projecting some of the gap, filling through stereotypes and biases.

Tom Moriarty:

Yeah, I think that's a really good example right.

Tom Moriarty:

With that specific age group.

Tom Moriarty:

And now we've gone from because someone

Tom Moriarty:

grabbed their phone, they're now automatically flighty and have a short attention span.

Tom Moriarty:

That definitely could be a jump into your point.

Tom Moriarty:

When it gets to the point of how you would use the outputs, I could see how that would

Tom Moriarty:

completely alter the way that you choose to deliver a specific type of training to that

Tom Moriarty:

audience.

Danielle Wallace:

Exactly.

Danielle Wallace:

And that's because Learner Personas to go full

Danielle Wallace:

circle are all about creating the right learning strategy, the right learning outputs

Danielle Wallace:

based on a solid, data driven understanding of who that learner is.

Danielle Wallace:

So it all goes full circle.

Tom Moriarty:

I love it, and it is really a full circle type exercise.

Tom Moriarty:

Danielle, thank you so much for your time.

Tom Moriarty:

This has been a fantastic discussion on

Tom Moriarty:

Learner personas, their strategic value, the relationships between a marketing persona and

Tom Moriarty:

a learning persona.

Tom Moriarty:

And really, towards the back half of this

Tom Moriarty:

question, I really appreciate how tactical we got with Mary's example.

Tom Moriarty:

I think there are tremendous amount of takeaways for our audience here.

Tom Moriarty:

So I just want to thank you again for your time.

Tom Moriarty:

It's been really impactful.

Danielle Wallace:

This has been delightful, and I look forward to more learner Personas

Danielle Wallace:

out there in the world.

Tom Moriarty:

Amen. Amen. Danielle, before we wrap, if the audience would like to learn more

Tom Moriarty:

about you, what you're doing, maybe hear more of your voice and grab more ideas from you

Tom Moriarty:

about Learner personas.

Tom Moriarty:

Where can they find you socially or on the

Tom Moriarty:

World Wide Web?

Danielle Wallace:

Yeah, I've got free Learner Persona resources, actually on my website, www

Danielle Wallace:

dot beyondthesky CA.

Danielle Wallace:

Actually, I have a lot.

Danielle Wallace:

There three templates.

Danielle Wallace:

And infographics about learner personas.

Danielle Wallace:

And you can also find me on LinkedIn.

Danielle Wallace:

I'm very active on social media where I

Danielle Wallace:

translate what's happening in the marketing world and put it into very practical terms for

Danielle Wallace:

learning and development professionals.

Tom Moriarty:

That's awesome.

Danielle Wallace:

Great.

Tom Moriarty:

Thanks.

Tom Moriarty:

Thank you again.

Tom Moriarty:

This has been a really enjoyable conversation.

Tom Moriarty:

I appreciate it.

Danielle Wallace:

Thank you so much.

Tom Moriarty:

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Tom Moriarty:

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Tom Moriarty:

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