What to Put into Your Jane Doe Profile

When starting out, aim for qualitative and quantitative information. A word of warning: you may never confidently have all this information, so hold these suggestions lightly.

Data. General demographics are helpful. Benefit plan and program elections offer unique psychological clues about user priorities and potential for your product to succeed. For instance, 401(k) data hints at financial stability as well as caretaking of the “future self”. Medical claims offer population level clarity on “what hurts” right now, and what risks are ahead.

Workplace Ecology. You can make generalizations about the physical space your users inhabit during their workdays. Abstract characteristics, like employee engagement or trust in leadership, can be more useful in crafting your media strategy.

Patient or Caregiver Engagement. Since you’re after engagement and behavior change, in pursuit of some positive health outcome, it can be useful to consider the ideal patient-provider relationship. And the realistic. Many patients defer to their physicians. Few patients consider themselves active members of their care team. Does that matter for you? What health problems do you address? Do comorbidities matter? Don’t linger too long here, but any specificity suggests vulnerability and humanity.

Opportunities and Friction Points. These categories can help you deconstruct your mission and vision. The barriers–the hesitations and hurdles that are not spotlighted–help everyone work with eyes wide open.

How to Use Your Jane Doe

As a young professional, I would hang her above my desk while I worked. Now, I work more abstractly, holding Jane Doe in mind like a short story character. How does she speak? What’s funny to her? What makes her cry? Would I know her personally, or would we only meet in a grocery check out line? That helps me figure out who else to involve to help me navigate my blind spots.

Tactically, I find this portrait useful when building a media plan, including the platforms and the pacing. When staring down the blank page, I can get into conversation with this person, feel into their life and their movements. Critically, I share it with all creative collaborators, particularly those who haven’t been part of the strategy discussions. It often inspires more creativity, as we all attune to this particular human and their struggles.

To compete with information overload, creatives may have to strike hard. In order to emotionally reach people, we may need to take bold creative risks. If you need to convince stakeholders to shift from bland marketing or bland user communication, try polishing up a segment profile. Go ahead, add a picture.

What Works for You?

We’d love to hear about your experiments and your feedback. Book some time for a peer-to-peer discussion.