Persona development through audience insights
Discover
Stakeholder workshop
Plan
Project planning, stakeholder engagement, research methodology, focus group design
Produce
Survey creation and analysis, focus group facilitation, persona development
Objective
To enhance the training it provides to its highly valued volunteers, the Country Fire Authority (CFA) wanted to implement a more learner-focused training approach that met the diverse needs of its volunteer cohort.
Content Empire was engaged to survey its 50,000 volunteers, facilitate a series of deep-dive focus groups to tease out common attributes. We then drew on these quantitive and qualitative results to develop a series of data-driven personas to enable learning and development teams to better understand the CFA membership and more closely align training opportunities to their learning preferences.
Outcome
Learner insights through audience research
To produce personas that accurately reflected the learning attributes of the CFA membership, Content Empire:
- Designed and implemented an effective research methodology
- Produced, distributed and analysed the results of a 30+ question online survey
- Conducted a series of focus groups, drawing on collaborative tools such as Mural to gather feedback and ideas in real time
Thanks to a well crafted and executed promotional campaign, the research activities achieved excellent engagement:
- 550+ surveys were completed
- 270+ people volunteered for focus group
- 5+ hours of focus groups were undertaken
- 270+ pieces of individual feedback were received
After collating and analysing the findings from the survey and focus groups, Content Empire designed and produced five learner personas that reflected the unique needs, preferences and learning styles of members.
The CFA is using the personas to shape the design and delivery of its training programs – location, delivery method and frequency – to enhance the learning experience for members, improve learning outcomes and ensure volunteers have the skills and knowledge they need to respond to incidents safely.