What if you could make 100% sure that your product and business couldn’t fall victim to fake news or misinterpretation?
An interesting concept I’m hearing online.
The antipersona.
What is that?
The guys at Nielsen Norman Group published a very good article on it, but to sum it up it’s about creating a clear picture of what someone misusing your product could look like.
It’s a very good way to prevent disasters and keep you out of trouble.
There are a couple of cases where you could build antipersonas, but it boils down to identifying the potential threats:
- Stealing information
- Creating or sharing illegal information
- Creating or sharing misinformation
- Potentially harming a child
Could your product or business allow for any of these to happen?
Then you might need to work on your antipersonas.
Identify the exact use cases, type of person and methodology that would fall into any of those categories.
Then foolproof your business or product to prevent it.
An example comes to mind when I worked on a SaaS website in a pretty scammy market. We managed to distance ourselves with the copy and positioning from the mass of competitors to look and feel legit, but also to act as legitimately as possible with the product.
But did I have any power on the product strategy and roadmap, I would have definitely considered building an antipersona.
What would happen if this person used this software product this [wrong] way?
And then I would have addressed it.
It’s a bit like imagining a worst-case scenario, but you try to put yourself in another person’s shoes.
Always a helpful exercise.
Feeling like you’re leaving this stuff to chance? Get in touch.
P.S.
Another weekly website teardown just dropped. It’s a good example of how to convert leads from Youtube – or any other social platform – to website signups. You can find it here, subscribe to get notifications if you enjoy it.
