Parent and State Personas

As part of its work to integrate lived experience into the work and decision-making of ACF, the Office of Regional Operations (ORO) developed seven parent personas (PDF) (PDF) to better understand the lived experiences, pain points and unmet needs of the families HHS serves. Three state personas (PDF) (PDF) were also developed to understand the experience of the individuals that administer these programs.

What is a persona?

A persona is a composite character that represents a distinct group according to their attitudes, frustrations, needs and aspirations. It is a tool that helps synthesize observations and draw out insights while building empathy for the people for whom we are designing.

To capture the experiences of families, ORO conducted interviews with 24 parents across two regions and analyzed over 2000 data points to create the parent personas. Each of the personas depicts a common crossroads scenario where a parent wants to, or is preparing to, take the next step toward greater economic mobility but has challenges or needs.

The parent persona have allowed ACF and its stakeholders to:

• Empathize with families and see things from their point of view;
• Understand meaningful and actionable differences in what our user families need from services; and
• Design solutions to fit families, instead of the other way around.