Understanding Your UsersResearch: Developing Personas

Before We BeginWe are going to talk about a design led project that will aid in business and engineering efforts.

Premise

We all have biases, assumptions, and perspectives.Naturally, we all tend to build products that fulfill our own preferences, desires, and ways of thinking.

We are not our users. We need to design for them and not for ourselves. There are methods to ensure we create products tailor made for the specific needs and goals of our users.

Here in Silicon Valley, we forget how skewed our population is, and we should frequently remind ourselves how abnormal we really are. The average person who uses a software based product around here isn't really very average. – Alan Cooper

QQuestionHow can we build better software?

AAnswerBy better understanding our users.But who are our users really?

Your Users

Goals Attitudes

Motivations Mental Models Relationships Technology Pain Points

Environment Processes

Problem We have lots of users! How can we possibly design for every one of them?

If you design for everyone, you make no individual happy.

You can design for specific types of users.

We determine what types of users we serve with research.

We analyze that research to find segments of user types.

Each type of user is represented by a model called a persona.

Persona noun pərˈsōnəPersonas are archetypes (models) that represent groups of real users who have similar attributes.

A persona encapsulates and explains the most critical data about users in a way that team members can understand, remember, and relate to.

Persona Each persona serves as a single surrogate for many actual users, which produces a clear target to aim for.

By designing for these personas, you can satisfy the needs of the thousands or millions of potential users who have similar characteristics and goals.

IM NOT IMPRESSED."PERSONAS SEEM LIKE FAKE USERS. "

WHATS THE POINT?

IM NOT IMPRESSED"DIDN’T WE MAKE"

PERSONAS BEFORE?

PERSONAS ARE USEFUL IF THEY ARE CREATED WITH"ETHNOGRAPHY.

Ethnography noun eTHˈnägrəfē Ethnography informs design by revealing a deep understanding of people and how they make sense of their world.

Ethnography is a research method based on observing people in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting.

When ethnography is applied to design, it helps designers create more compelling solutions.

Uses

developing documentation

building consensus and rallying a team around a goal

defining and designing the product

prioritizing bug fixes

marketing the product

communicating with stakeholders about your audience

Uses

Personas can be used for almost anything. For the entire life cycle of product creation."If you want to use user-centric methodology.

What Personas Are Not

Market Segments Stereotypes Average Users Roles

What Personas Are NotMarket Segments

What Personas Are NotRoles

What Personas Are NotRoles

Example Role: Surgeon | Behavior Types: Two"

1. focused on ensuring the longevity of the implant 2. focused on how quickly the surgery takes

A successful design must accommodate these two distinct philosophies and approaches.

A LessonHoward Moskowitz & Spaghetti Sauce

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

There is no one right spaghetti sauce for everyone.

There is no one right feature or workflow for everyone.

Personas help us implement the right features to the right people in the right way.

Personas are important and useful.They help us get into our user’s heads and use their perspective to inform our decisions.

How to create and use personasWhats next

The Plan Phase 1

Setup

form a team determine projectscope, milestones, deliverables state research goals

Leverage Existing Info

secondary domain

researchexternal resources (people) internal resources (people)

Prototyping

create provisional personas

validate and refine develop a hypothesis

The Plan Phase 2

Primary Research

gather participants contextual inquiry (interviews) determine additional methods

(if needed)

Synthesis

identify behavioral variables

map and cluster participants into

groups

identify patterns define goals clarify distinctions

and add detail

The Plan Phase 3

Presentation and Use

design individual personas

create a persona set to compare

introducepersonas

continually socialize, utilize, and reference

personas

The Plan All Phases

Setup

Leverage Existing Info

Prototyping

Primary Research

Synthesis

Presentation and Use

TimingHow long will this process take?

Depends on many variables. This is difficult to determine and requires more research to figure this aspect out.

Setup1. Develop a team

Who will work together to create personas?

2. Determine Project Scope, milestones and deliverables

3. State Research GoalsWhat do you want to find out? This will help you determine what methods to find answers to your questions. Also beneficial is to determine how you will use the personas. Ensure that personas don't just become an artifact, because the value is so not in the artifact itself.

Leverage Existing Info1. Domain Knowledge

Primary research quality goes up when you have already researched the subject matter and domain before hand. This knowledge will help you ask insightful questions later on.

2. Existing External sources Talk to Stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts - Leverage the knowledge of others who know more then you do. What are the possible external sources of data relevant to your domain, company, or product? Are there institutions or other companies that might have conducted research related to your domain?

3. Existing Internal Sources Who are the subject-matter experts in your company? Who has the most contact with existing customers? Your support organization, sales force, and account representatives can be great sources of information about your users.

PrototypingIt’s recommend that you create provisional personas whether or not you plan to collect first-hand data about your target users."!• Help you target your field research to validate (or contradict) current impressions of

who users are.

• Provide some practice with persona conception and gestation methods before you need to create your “real” personas.

• Provisional personas are easy to create and help people understand why personas are valuable

• Provisional personas can be the eye-opening catalyst that gets your team interested in some real user research. When your assumptions are exposed, so are gaps in your knowledge of your users. Ad hoc personas can lead your organization toward more rigorous user-centered design (UCD) techniques.

Primary Research

1. Identify likely roles From stakeholder and subject matter expert discussions, you should be able to develop an educated guess of the roles people who will use the product.

2. Determine the base number of interviewees per roleIf the product or service is in a highly specialized industry with narrowly defined roles, assume you need a minimum of about four interviewees per role; this is usually the minimum number to see a behavior pattern.!!

4. Multiply sample size for important factors Next, you may need to increase the sample size based on other factors that you expect to cause BEHAVIORAL DIFFERENCES.

5. Trim the sample and incorporate other factors Time and cost may become prohibitive when numbers get large. For most projects, the optimal sample size turns out to be the base number of people per role (usually 4 or 8) multiplied by your top one or two factors.

6. Adjust for no shows and poor interviews

Primary Research

Primary Research

Synthesis1. Divide interviewees by role, if appropriate

When the division between roles is very clear, its best to treat research participants in each role as a separate group for the purpose of identifying patterns. This is because large differences tend to obscure smaller differences. Make sure to compare apples to apples, and not apples to oranges.

2. Identify behavioral and demographic variables For each role, identify which aspects of BEHAVIOR and ATTITUDE seem to differ across interviewees. Then add DEMOGRAPHIC information, as well as ENVIRONMENTAL factors.

3. Map interviewees to variablesPlace each interviewee relative to the others in each spectrum (and in the appropriate multiple choice categories, if applicable).

4. Identify Patterns Start by trying to find two or more people who frequently appear together across multiple variables. After this, try explaining and/or rationalizing why these variables are related – this will help strengthen the patterns you find.

Synthesis5. Define Goals

Goals are an integral part of personas. The level of specificity of goals is known as END GOALS: aims the persona could accomplish, at least in part, by using the product or service. Its typical to have 1-3 goals per persona.

6. Clarify distinctions and add detail Patterns and goals are just the beginning; to become a real persona, you still need to add details about BEHAVIOR, ATTITUDES, ENVIRONMENT, and others to make the personas effective tools for design and communication. Every user persona should incorporate a ‘day in the life’ description of current behaviors relevant to the problems you are trying to solve. Don’t insert a bunch of fictitious details or needless fluff.

7. Fill in other persona types as neededUsing the methods described previously.

Presentation and Use1. Develop the narrative and other communication

An effective description includes:!• Name!• Photo!• Narrative!

- behaviors!- frustrations!- environment!- skills and capabilities!- feelings and attitudes!- relationships!- demographics!- goals

2. Help others understand the personas as a setIn addition to helping everyone understand the personas as individuals you should develop ways to communicate about them as a set that represents a range of behaviors and needs.!

Lets go make some personas!Thank You

Works Cited

About Face 3 - Alan Cooper, Robert Reiman, and David Cronin!An Enthographic Primer - AIGA!Designing For the Digital Age - Kim Goodwin!Interviewing Users - Steve Portigal!The User is Always Right - Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar!The Inmates are Running the Asylum - Alan Cooper!

some of the presentation was copied directly from the sources below but was also remixed and altered by Shlomo ‘Mo’ Goltz ( www.sgoltz.com )

Images are not given proper attribution but were found on google, flickr, and the sources above.

Additional Sourceshttp://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/personas.html!http://www.frontend.com/the-effectiveness-of-using-personas-in-product-design.html!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)!http://asinthecity.com/2011/05/13/explaining-personas-used-in-ux-design-–-part-1/!http://uxmag.com/articles/love-hate-and-empathy-why-we-still-need-personas!http://www.ux-lady.com/diy-user-personas/!http://www.ux-lady.com/introduction-to-user-personas/!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/06/measuring_the_effectiveness_of!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/05/perfecting_your_personas!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/05/reconciling_market_segments_an!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/05/getting_from_research_to_perso!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/05/ignore_that_designer_behind_th!http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas!http://www.greenbook.org/marketing-research/w5-on-personas-06410!http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd569755.aspx!http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/04/user-research-for-personas-and-other-audience-models.php!http://boxesandarrows.com/personas-and-the-role-of-design-documentation/!http://www.deyalexander.com.au/resources/uxd/personas.html!http://johnnyholland.org/2009/03/why-shouldnt-i-kill-personas/

Additional Sourceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_inquiry!http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/06/why-are-contextual-inquiries-so-difficult.php!http://www.amazon.com/101-Design-Methods-Structured-Organization/dp/1118083466/ref=pd_sim_b_19!http://www.designstaff.org/articles/get-better-data-from-user-studies-interviewing-tips-2012-03-07.html!http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/02/22/focus-questions-for-site-visits/!https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SLIB/Interview+Protocol!http://alistapart.com/article/interviewing-humans!http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf97153/chap_3.htm!http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2008/07/preparing-for-user-research-interviews-seven-things-to-remember.php!http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/01/developing-your-interviewing-skills-part-i-preparing-for-an-interview.php!http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/02/developing-your-interview-skills-part-ii-during-the-interview.php