Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit, which also counts towards the optional UX Research Specialty.
Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.
Successfully turn user data into user interfaces. Learn how to create, maintain and utilize personas throughout the UX design process.
The basis of the course is a lecture format with a couple of group exercises to reinforce the learned principles and techniques.
The course also includes:
Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit, which also counts towards the optional UX Research Specialty.
Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.
"I feel much, much more confident that I can create personas and more importantly, that I can help my organisation be more user-centered by using personas the right way."
Maxime Delavegne, Cisco
"Great refresher on Personas, even for seasoned researchers! Loved the practice applications — what's worked in other real-life projects, what doesn't. Great way to quickly learn from others. Loved the new and varied ideas, strategies."
Helen Kim, Capital One
"I was a persona hater but Kim's process really made me feel like I could create personas that were real and that I could believe in/champion. Kim was an amazing presenter & teacher, clear communicator & made everyone comfortable."
Briet, Solstice
"I was editing personas that I had brought with me as the course took place. Good tips and tricks."
Colin Sanders, NHS Education for Scotland
More Participant Comments
"I loved the hands-on nature of today's seminar. Very tangible exercises. I thought Kim was knowledgeable and presented her material well."
Chris Carpenter, CBN
"Kim naturally and expertly presented why, what, how, and how-not-to personas. I now feel confident in assessing and creating personas for my clients."
Ehow Chen, Ambition Data
"Seriously amazing & valuable course. I actually feel like after taking this course I can take what I learned and apply it to my job. This course was extremely valuable and I know I'll be able to make an impact on my company's goals."
Amanda Sandbeck, Jamf
"Personas is such a broad & loosely parametered practice but it holds so much potential value. Kim's course was a perfect balance of real-world examples and practice and application through exercises. This is my favorite course so far."
Ariel Wooten, IRS
"My organization has discussed creating personas for our products and services many times. Having sat through today's presentations and participating in every step of the process, I am finally ready to take the initiative to guide my team and develop our own."
Nate Casimiro
"I learned a ton in Kim's persona class! She's a great speaker and gives a perfect balance between showing and doing. Highly recommended!"
Seth Wagerman
"Right mix of lecture & exercises. Exercises helped us learn faster."
Karen Renner, Nestle Purina
"Amazing resource for building and using personas!"
Devon Singh, Honeywell
"Everything was perfect, including the length of the exercises! Loved the rocks example, that was so creative. This was the best course I've taken so far at the conference! I will go back to my team with the confidence to implement personas and help our start up grow in the right direction."
Lexi Neubauer, Mac & Mia
"Very happy with the course. Covered all the topics I was hoping — from making the case to how to measure success."
Anne Richardson, StudioNorth
"I've obtained persona enlightenment."
James Hsu, Silent Letter Studio
"I''ve learned invaluable info that I can take back and start talking about and planning for."
Chris Metzger, TEKsystems
"Kim ALWAYS kills it. She balances examples, exercises, discussions and tips really well. I love her courses."
Ameie Sirois, Shopify
"Great job! Love the use of emoji characthers."
Linda C, HMH
"Kim was so engaging! I learned so much more than I thought I would."
Wendy LeBlanc
"This course was taught in a very accessible manner that made sense to my situation."
Adam Fields, Follett School Solutions
"Well designed personas make the difference between a good and bad experience. Kim tells her story about personas in such a way you will change your way of working and make personas important along the whole process in your company."
Guillaume Thys, Deloitte Digital
"It was interesting, I learned a lot of things that I can use next week on my current project or on other projects in the future."
Gill Balcaen, Movify
"Puts a process around personas. Nice examples of benefits and how to apply to product pipeline."
Aoife Suelly, Ireland
"Kim was a great presenter! She is confident and knowledgeable on personas and helped guide during exercises but not hand hold. She took an abstract topic and helped break it down to usable information."
Maggie McMahon, Des Moines, IA
"Great course materials — I feel that I have come away with a better idea of how to create and use personas. As well as some enthusiastic plans for my team!"
Claire Howell, Into University Partnerships
"This course covers everything personas but manages to focus on the most important use cases."
Johan Steinberg, University Hospital North Norway
"In depth persona understanding and also the challenges faced in persona creation in an organisation were well explained."
Eshani K, Sanach Studios, India
"This course really showed me the value of personas and how it can be incorporated within the workplace and with clients. Highly recommend!"
Hazel Ho, What Users Do
"A well presented course that clearly shows why and how to use personas, and most importantly how to get everyone on board."
Adam Gray, Unidays
"We already use personas in our work, but there were still plenty of tips that I could take away. I would highly recommend the course to anyone in UX!"
Laura Paplauskeite, Bit Zesty
"Great presenter that gave a good insight into how to create and implement personas both with theory and excersises."
Sofie Asplund, Knowledge Cube
"It was amazingly refreshing of my knowledge, so thank you so much. I'm inspired and ready to launch new products not only to my users but also to my company. Some new changes in their opinion about UX and its utility. Thank you for it. P.S. Amazing part about translating personas from UX-team to all team/company."
Valeriya, Alfa-bank, Moscow, Russia
"A great kickstarter to something I've been circling around for years but never got to tackle directly."
Ascanio Colonna di Pauano, FCA Italy
"Great course and great presentation. Lot of details to make a print and provide examples. Loved the course excersises that seemed very real."
Doll, OECD
"Great for understanding and gaining skills to create personas when you know what personas are, but not sure how to execute. Kim is a top notch instructor!"
Sara Chokr, Itech Media
"Kim explains and presents the science of, and behind, creating personas more than I anticipated today, plus I met loads of very interesting people from all over the world. If you're looking for a thorough, accurate presentation on personas — Kim is your girl!"
Monike, London
"Page takes you on an exciting tour from data to persona for design. During the course you can sense where you are going but you could never have gotten their on your own."
Maaike van den Haak, Vrije Universiteit
"Kim did a great job demonstrating the value of personas. My mind exploded with ideas for my teams!"
Matthew Denny, Naval Air Warfare
"This is the most fun class I've taken through NN/g. Kim is a truly top notch presenter. The collaborative exercises were fun and the learnings can be applied daily."
Lisanne Wirth, Folsom, CA
"Great style of teaching. Real world examples you can relate to."
Abul Siddique, Salesforce
"This course was awesome! There was a clear process drawn out that I am excited to start using with my company."
Sabrina Alaimo, Toronto
"I found that it not only refreshed my previous learnings from Alan Cooper course, it flushed out a lot of detail including getting buy in."
Helen Briggs-Killinbech, RBC
"I've been working on UX for about 10 years and created personas for a couple of projects. Even though I knew how to do it already, the course gave me more confidence and an approved method to work with!"
Andrea, Google
"Loved hearing a formal persona process to follow. It'll keep us focused as a team."
Andy Patrick, Jan Kelley
"It was helpful to take the course material and apply it with sample scenarios with a team. I gained a lot of interesting insights and perspectives from others that made an exercise that I thought was a no-brainer become more dimensional and thoughtful."
Tiffany Huynh, Vizient
"Kim was a great instructor, especially as personas can be an elusive subject. A good mix of content and exercises to help craft personas to meet business objectives."
Stacey Radcliffe, Belron International
"I loved that Kim was real with us. You could really tell that she has actually done everything she taught us and believes in it."
Vanessa, Trend Micro
"Great techniques for actually creating personas and how to use them effectively."
Kevin O'Hara, Chatham Financial
"Far and away one of the best and most practically useful courses I've done through NN/g. She put a lot of research and work into this and it showed. She did not have to rush, was well organized and struck a perfect balance of lecture, Q&A and group exercise."
Jamie Wolf, Dolby
"Helped me to understand the whole personas lifecycle: How to get stakeholder buy-in, how to create effective personas, and how to use personas effectively to keep them alive."
Adam Bradley, Ey_Seren
"I absolutely loved this course. This course did a fantastic job giving both a high level overview of methods to craft and utilize personas effectively as well as a great interactive session to dig into the details on how to create valuable personas as well as understand and communicate why this is an asset to the UX process."
Becky Sroufe, Trinity Health, Inc.
"This course was great. The hands-on exercises really helped enforce the lessons and the instructor was very knowledgeable."
Karen Goliger, Boca Raton, FL
"I loved the step by step direction and layout w/solutions for every budget and team size."
Gianna Biocca, University of AZ
"Kim's energy was super engaging and she lead the class with a lot of confidence. The material was relevant and east to consume. Overall fantastic class and conference! I highly, highly recommend!"
Melissa Hahm, Cisco Systems
"Loved the exercises. They were not overly complicated. I felt that this gave a good foundation for understanding the process of creating a persona. Very engaging — enjoyed the day immensely."
Libbie Forden, University of Newcastle
"Great insights about Personas! Worth taking this course for sure. I will recommend to my friends."
Balakrishnan Sundaram, HCL Technologies, Bangalore, India
"I really enjoyed this session. I develop a lot of personas but I still felt I learnt some new skills and some different methods to analyse the research."
Katrina Riddle, The Outliers, Sydney
"Very hands on, in depth and a lot of great examples across all industries."
Raissa Rosowski, Venus Fashion Inc.
"Kim's class on personas was very helpful. I feel like I learned a lot that I can take back to may organization to use. I also appreciate her presentation style. Very professional."
Rachel Banks, Abercrombie & Fitch
"I thought I knew enough about personas, I guess there's always more to learn. The course goes beyond the basics and puts personas to work!"
Edgar Ancaldu
"Lot of information & knowledge on personas but presented in a way that does not seem a lot! Kim is amazing in putting across her knowledge in a way that just seems like a story and not a course."
Akshalta Prabhu
"Favorite class yet! Very engaging and hands on. Helped reinforce principles learned and made the class fun! Will easily be able to apply right away! Thanks for a great day."
Leanna Tennant, Motorists Insurance
"Really enjoyed the exercise for synthesizing & highlighting qualification data from interviews. Very real exercise to what I deal with in my day-to-day work responsibilities."
Steve Mapes, CNH Industrial
"Useful information and practical tactics for organizations small and large."
Morgan Romero
"Great insights and examples! Between case studies from Kim's experience and the in class activity, it was so easy to see how we can apply personas back home."
Chalyce MacDonald
"Kim was an engaging and knowledgeable instructor. She helped demystify and break down everything about personas — from creation to communicating."
Lauren Hatch
"I feel so much more confident about creating and using personas with my team."
Rachel Finch, Intel
"Awesome session! Added important details to my foundational understanding."
J. Gibson
"Kim was great instructor-very engaging and knowledgeable. After this course, I feel like I could build a true persona and make decisions from it."
Madison Stumhofer
"If you think you know personas you need to take this class! There are many tools to help you make personas more convincing. Class does a great job explaining the why and how to get the most value out of your personas."
Grace Buenrostro
"Coming from a quantitative segmentation background, I learned that you don't need always need tons of data to bring your target audience to life. I have never taken an in-person NN/g course but I thought this course worked really well online. Two days, 3.5 hours per day with a 20 minute break was the just the right amount of time. We covered a ton of material without feeling rushed. The break out room exercises were great and seamless."
Tracy Dennis, Intellego Insights, Houston
"After spending years reading articles and watching videos about how to create personas, and trying and failing to develop useful ones, I finally feel like I can put together an action plan and get started. And I think this time they'll stick!"
Sara Berkes, SHOEBOX Ltd, Ottawa, Canada
"I loved taking the course online. You get the same value as in the in-person training. It feels so organized and you actually get a written record of everyone's questions and answers by using Zzoom and Slack. It was super useful having Sarah sending articles through the chat while Kim answered the questions."
Laura Riva Palacio, Chihuahua, Mexico
"If you think a persona is a demographic or role; you've got to rethink it. This class helped me understand that the knowledge of a person's aspect (emotions, thoughts, and the why's to what they do) is important when thinking about design."
Lloyd Ocampo, Federal Reserve, Atlanta
"This is I think the third course I've taken with Kim and as always she hasn't let me down on being able to deliver great information in a clear concise manner. She's also very good about opening the floor to questions and conversation that allows everyone to feel involved."
William Rabil, AOPA, Germantown, MD
"Very useful course! This course talk about the different types of research that you could do, as well as the process to be able to build them correctly, and different alternatives to do it (depending on recourses and needs)."
Serguei Orozco, Amazon, Seattle
"This is the first NNg course/conference I've attended. I was really impressed by the delivery of the content by Kim despite it being online/remote. I went from knowing personas as a vague concept to having some solid ideas on how to develop and apply personas in my job and at my organization."
Chen, Arizona
"It's very great virtual conference, great class, great speaker and moderator, great teammates for discussion, and a lot knowledge i gained from this class. Having fun to join this class."
Muhammad Ihsan M, PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
"The course was packed with invaluable insights in the many facets of Persona Development, Use Cases and Best Practice."
Aubrey Morrell, KCOM, Hull UK
"It's great for product managers, product owners or designers who do not know how to effectively work with personas."
Monika Sznel, Demant Technology Centre, Warszawa
"The Personas course provided me with great take aways on the creation, application and value, during the day there practical group activities, plenty of opportunities for questions and answers."
Shaun Myles, Influence Catalyst, London, England
"Loved how he used so many examples sprinkled through out the sessions!"
Larisa Rashid, Roche/Genentech, San Francisco
"I knew what personas were, and I thought I knew how to construct them. Thanks to this course, I now know when and why to build them, and how to create ones that are simple, consumable, and memorable."
Amber Asaro, eCW, Ponte Vedra, FL
"Gain much needed clarity on what the Persona tool is and how to use it better."
JayCluj-Napoca, Romania
"The presenter was very knowledgeable and delivered in a very engaging / conversational way. Especially good given the additional challenges of maintaining interest over a days virtual conference."
Greg Nottage, Close Brothers Asset Management, London
"Its informative and gives an overview on what do you need to know about personas."
Mohammed Alanazi, HUED, Riyadh/Saudi Arabia
"I get a lot of value from Nielsen Norman courses as a mid-level user researcher. I learn many new concepts and affirm what I know already, which is a great confidence booster. The content is engaging, discussing are inspiring, and it makes me level up in my profession."
Beth Devine, Stack Overflow, San Francisco
"This was a great insight into how to build effective personas, but also how to involve teams and stakeholders in the process and encourage buy-in. Great to hear Kim show examples of good and bad personas — I found that really helpful."
Steve Jackson, Applaud Solutions, Camberley, UK
"Although I've worked on personas a couple of times already, this course filled some gaps that I knew I had but wasn't quite sure how to find the right answers. I feel I can trust the information I received during this course rather than spending endless hours trying to find the right information (and then questioning if it's the right information) online. I would highly recommend taking this course as it's foundational for UX/Product Design work."
Julia Feld, Hotjar, Berlin, Germany
"A really useful course that takes you through the entire process of how to successfully create and implement personas. Really enjoyed the hands on approach with group activities and case studies!"
Sophie Peters, Cambridge, UK
"If you are planning on doing persona work you need to take this course!"
Jessica Weisner, Sun Life, Waterloo, Canada
"Yes, I definitely benefited from taking the class to get more clarity and methodological tools to explore personas professionally, data-driven, and qualitatively. Kim is also a very knowledgeable and attentive instructor, which makes the class even better."
Priscila Vasconcelos, Secfi, Amsterdam
"I liked the analysis process that was presented to make sense of the interview findings by grouping similar characteristics - I will definitely apply that to my work."
Jenna Frkovich, RTI International, Durham
"This is a great course to get grounded in personas and learn techniques to quickly get you ramped up from a research mindset."
E Page, Lenovo, Raleigh
"Personas was the most enjoyable course I have taken and this is my third conference."
Joshua Scott, Booz Allen Hamilton
Understanding your users is the core principle in user-centered design. But how do you get from knowing about users to actively creating an excellent user experience? Utilizing user personas as a design tool can help you accomplish just that.
User personas are fictitious yet realistic representations of your target users. They act as a multipurpose tool used to drive many important product development tasks such as: the creation of user scenarios, feature generation, and feature prioritization. Created out of complex user data, personas take on a format that is meaningful and creates user empathy among your development team, ensuring your users are always the focus of your efforts.
In this course you will learn methods for developing effective user personas as well as time-tested techniques for embedding them into your design process to aid in decision-making and inspire creativity along the way. You will leave with a full understanding of why personas work, and the skills needed to bring them to life and utilize them effectively within your own organization and existing methodologies.
Georgia Rakusen
Whatusersdo