Robert Reimann, one of the people who literally wrote the book on personas, once mentioned that one of the most important elements of a persona is the photo of the person. My personal experience confirms this: I long remember the names and pictures of old personas long after I’ve forgotten other (probably more important) details about them.
A persona’s picture gives a face–literally–to the data, and choosing the right one is a combination of science and art. The science first.
I’m probably giving away my greatest secret here: Yahoo Personals are the best place online to find pictures for your personas. Why? Because there is an extensive amount of criteria they have that you can search by, for one thing. Looking for a 40-year-old lesbian Native American woman near Cheyenne? No problem, here’s about 20 of them, in a photo gallery for you to peruse. Another thing: people look their best in their photo personal ad, even if that best isn’t all that great. There’s a wide range of humanity to choose from.
The main difficulty in using Yahoo Personals is that you’re never sure of the size of the photo that people have uploaded. It might look fine onscreen, but be too tiny for print use. I’ve spent a lot of time frustrated after having found the perfect photo for my persona only to find out it’s too small or of too poor quality to use in print.
Also be sure to pick photos with a fairly neutral background and with no one else in the picture. In most cases, you want the focus of the photo to be mostly on the person’s face.
The art of choosing a persona resides in how two things relate to the data: what s/he is wearing, and what his/her expression is. Clothes tell a lot about a person (or, more accurately, what perceivers assume about the person): what they value, their socio-economic status, career, and a host of other things. Expression conveys attitude. How does the person approach the world? Cautiously, joyfully, angrily (yes, there are some angry photos in the personals!), hopefully? With expression, you can capture how your persona is going to approach your product, and that expression may say more than everything else you’ve written on the page.
It helps if you believe it too. The picture has to look like someone you could have talked to (or did talk to, if you interviewed people remotely). If it doesn’t seem like one of them, throw it out. There’s plenty more where that came from.
One final note about persona pictures: don’t get cute with them. The fastest way to have people dismiss your personas is to put in ridiculously beautiful/handsome people, people holding puppies, celebrities, you, your teammates, etc. It might be funny or clever for a moment, but that’ll fade and your personas will have lost all their power to remind us that it’s not about us, it’s about them.