Using personas to create empathy

One way to evaluate the social value is to identify the audience you are creating value for and learn more about this audience. You can do this by empathising with them to ensure you understand their needs and what they care about. An efficient way to empathise with your audience is by creating a persona. A persona is an imaginary character that represents one or more members of your audience.

Elements of a persona

To create a persona, list multiple assumptions you have about your audience, including things like demographics, their opinions, interests, attitudes and beliefs, as well as economic and occupation statuses.

This persona acts as a representative identity of your audience. You need to consider if addressing the opportunity you’ve identified will actually create value for this specific persona. Remember you should be considering a specific audience that will actually want this opportunity addressed.

This quick activity will give you a basic evaluation of the potential for creating social value. However, to actually validate the future of your opportunity you’ll need to do significant empathy work and talk to and get to know your audience. 

Ask your idol

Another basic reflection activity to test for social value would be to reflect on a personal idol who demonstrates ethical behaviour, like Gandhi, and ask questions like ‘What would Gandhi tell you to do?’ If you think he would be disappointed, or you yourself feel as though you have let your personal idol down if you were to ask them these questions, then it’s probably best you reframe your opportunity.