Last April, I joined Todd Zaki Warfel’s seminar on data-driven personas at the IA Summit. In his presentation, he showed some really excellent templates for presenting persona data, which I frantically copied down. In fact, I’ve already used a variation on his template for one of my own projects.
But now Todd has shared the source files for his templates, which I highly recommend that you download. It includes the page layout in an InDesign file and an Illustrator file with his graphs. I’ve found the graphs to be particularly useful, since they’re really easy for clients and team members to scan and digest.
One of the most interesting notes that I remember from Todd’s IA Summit presentation was the amount and variety of data that should go into a persona. He recommends at least 3 sources, including a mix of qualitative and quantitative research. (e.g. in-person interviews + survey + secondary research on your target demographic)
In my own experience, I have to agree that this range of data is invaluable. When you have a complete, data-driven persona in front of you, you feel much more empowered to say that a new feature or design decision will actually improve the user experience, or drive more ROI. This confidence is good for both the agency and the client.