People adopt new things because they perceive value. Value refers to not just economic value but also to emotional, cognitive, and psychic value. Value emerges when the specific effects of a new offering are perceived and experienced by an individual. The objective of the persona adoption methodology is to capture a person’s response to a new product, service, activity or event.

The persona allows one to describe a cohesive group of individual’s in terms of how they think and choose independently of a specific solution, product, or offering. In the past, it has been virtually impossible to describe, document, or model an individual’s behavior separately from a given solution. Making these two things independent allows you to be able to test different solutions against a common set of persona models in software.

People form their perceptions of new offerings in different ways. These differences are captured within the Persona descriptions based on primary research with a community of potential users, experts and other influencers, and stakeholders relevant to the context being studied. Key personas are developed that represent archetypal individuals in how they perceive the world with respect to the context being studied, be it safety, personal sanitization, electronic entertainment, or drug compliance.

A fundamental aspect of the primary research is that patterns emerge when the detailed information, knowledge, and insights of the community members are examined and synthesized. There are two types of patterns that are important.

Context Patterns

These are the common ‘frames-of-reference’ that people share when mentally thinking about a topic. They are the situations in which individuals form their perceptions of something new. People exist, perceive, and act in different contexts.

Thought Patterns

The second type of patterns to emerge from the feelings and thoughts of individuals. These patterns are represented by Experiences (feelings or emotional responses) and Outcomes (rational thoughts). Experiences and Outcomes are, in turn, represented as a set of dimensions that emerge from the community research and knowledge synthesis activities.

Experience Dimensions – These are the dimensions along which individuals ‘experience’ the context from a sub-conscious, emotional perspective.
Outcome Dimensions – These are the dimensions along which individuals ‘evaluate’ the context from a rational, conscious perspective.

Together, the Experience Dimensions and the Outcome Dimensions allow us to represent each distinct Persona according to what is most relevant to that Persona. This, in turn, permits one to assess how a persona will respond to a particular offering and it also establishes a basis for creating new concepts that a particular persona will respond strongly to. The following diagram shows an example persona profile consisting of the Outcome and Experience domain maps.


By modeling both personas and possible solutions it becomes possible to evaluate alternatives within the PAM simulation framework. The resulting simulations support a rich understanding of how people will react to specific concepts and can enable side-by-side comparison of product alternatives, initiatives, and external events.