Create Great Personas and Use Them

Dara Pressley @uxdiva

Create Great Personas and Use ThemDigital Summit - Dallas: 2015

Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

Dara PressleyWife & Mother

“I love, love, love talking about personas!”

Experience Architect

Devices & Networks• iMac • iPad Mini • iPhone 4s • Kindle Fire • Twitter

Previous Life• Poet | Fiction Writer | Tech Writer • Writing Instructor • Computer Instructor

Hobbies• Sims 3 - Oh Yeah! • Reading • Fiction writing

(sometimes) • What ever my kids or

husband want to do (mostly)

GoalsTo one day finish my novel!

Fun FactMy grandfather was an official griot - a Trinidadian storyteller.

StoryMy mother wanted me to follow after her and become a computer programmer. But a natural artist, I wanted to spend my time in writer’s workshop, theater, and the dance studio. So I spent my life going back and forth between her world and mine. Dancing from the time I was 2. Building my first computer game on an Atari when I was 7. Having one of the first personal computers in our neighborhood — took up most of the kitchen table. Enrolling in a performance arts school in 7th grade. Got a Mac in 1984 and never looked back. Learned desktop layout to create a newspaper. Majored in English and then Writing. Teaching classes both on fiction writing and computing. On and on until finally my two worlds collided in the field of web design.


What is a persona?


In 1995, noted pioneer software developer, developed the concept, which he named personas. The technique was popularized for the online business and technology community in his 1999 book.


Personas are multidimensional representations of real users. The Experience Community remains divided on whether they are based on empirical data or the imaginations of the author. Cooper often writes that the persona should at least be inspired by a real person.


It may seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most effective way to satisfy a broad population.

- Cooper


Why not just design for everyoneThe most successful products of the 20th and 21st century were those that we developed with a single target audience.

• 3m Post-It Note

• Rolling Luggage

• Facebook

80% of people hated the 1999 Dodge Ram. But the 20% who loved it made it into a best seller.


“We found in the past that if they didn’t understand the buyer, designers would just go off and design something for themselves.”

- Moray Callum, executive director of Ford Americas design


Before Creating the Car, Ford Designs the Driver

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/automobiles/19design.html?_r=0

ANTONELLA is an attractive 28-year old woman who lives in Rome. Her life is focused on friends and fun, clubbing and parties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/automobiles/19design.html?_r=0


Zombie Personas

In a 2010 Bar Camp Presentation on Zombie personas, Tom Allison states:

• UX in the Real World: There's no such thing as "No Persona”

• When the team doesn’t take the time create personas, Zombies are created instead

Characteristics of a Zombie

• They thrive in obscurity

• They’re not really “alive” to the project but they are still hard to kill

• They don’t seem that dangerous but they’ll eat the brains of your team

• They are afraid of the light of the “collaborative” day


Basically, if your team can’t agree on the who the end users is, much time and energy will be wasted arguing over features that may not even be the right.


How to create powerful personas


Base them on real people

• Unless you have a lot of experience in character development (Any fiction writers out here)

• Using real people helps to assure that you creating believable personas

• Who’s motivations, goals, and frustrations make sense


How to get real people

๏ User interviews are great — preferred!

๏ But also look around your own network of friends and acquaintances

Kim

Simone

Kevin

Haley


No useless details

• If my CustomInk persona like longs walks on the beach

• She better be wearing her custom apparel to commemorate the occasion


Celine

Mother

Problem: Kids with food allergies

Need: Tips and tools to help care

for them.

Desire: Easy and Quick

Proto-Persona

No time or budget? No Excuses.

Develop over time as more is learned about that user.

The most important thing is that the team agrees on who they are designing for.


Using Personas


I want to create a site that helps people with their food allergies





Stop right there



Before we plan a single feature or requirement. Let’s get our personas to help us out.

Stop right there


CelineWife & Mother

Celine’s Story

“The only thing we are not allergic to is air!”

Lawyer

Attributes

Cooking Skills

Amount of time for cooking

Amount of time for shopping

Social Connections

Low Med Hi

Devices & Networks• Macbook Pro • iPad Air • iPhone 5c • Kindle White • Twitter • Google +

Frustrations• Becoming a short order cook • Not having proper ingredients on hand • Children don’t like the “new” food • Sending food to parties • Not sure what to shop for • Eating out • School Lunch

GoalsCeline would like to be able to find her family health meals that fit their dietary needs. She also wants the creation process to be quick to fit with her busy schedule.

SocialCeline is well connected social and will use her network for tips and advice. She would be very likely to share anything she learned with network.

ScenarioCeline goes grocery shopping >> at the store she searches for food to make for the next few days >> her children keep adding food to her cart >> her bill is a lot more than expected >> dinner that night is a mix of several different meals for the different allergies.

Celine is a very busy corporate lawyer. She is also a wife and mother of 2 young children - a son 5 and daughter 3. She struggles to find a balance between her home and work life.

Celine has recently discovered that her family suffers from various food allergies. Some of which are life threaten. No one has exactly the same line up of allergies and she is not sure how to feed everyone. To make matters worse, her children are picky eaters.


Each persona should have at least one scenario planned out for them.

• Some of these come directly from the persona document

• Brainstorm for additional scenarios that make sense to their personality and motivations

• Don’t worry yet about it fits what you do

http://trello.com

http://trello.com


Celine goes shoppingEmail meal plan

Time savers and helpful


Celine goes shopping

Email meal plan & Shopping list





Tips about where to find hypo-allergic foods






Time savers and helpful Teach children to read labels





Time savers and helpful products

Teach children to read labels





Single meals that work for everyone







Replacing ingredients to make the foods they’re used to

Single meals that work for everyone




User Pathways


Celine plans her menu(mother persona)

Celine is putting together her meal plan for the week in preparation for going to the grocery store.

Home Login Personal Plan

Search & Results

Shopping List

Shopping List

Annotations

1 2 3

4 5

6

7

1) Home Celine opens the home page

Celine expects to see her menu plan OR login functionality

2) Login Celine logs in to the website. Her page is refreshed to her personal plan page.

Login functionality needs to exist

3) Personal Plan page Celine reviews the menu plan created for her. She knows that some of the meals would not work for her family, and wants to change them.

Ability to personalize menu.

4) Search Celine searches for menu options. After finding one that looks interesting she clicks on it to view more

5) Recipe page The recipe looks perfect. Celine saves the recipe to her personal recipe book and adds to menu plan.

Ability to save and add to plan.

6) Shopping List Celine Exports her meal plan to the shopping list. She doesn’t need everything and wants to adjust the list

Ability to tweak list

7) Shopping list - mobile At the store, Celine reviews her list as she shops.

Recipe Page


Convergent Ideas


Prioritize ContentCeline wants to... Smartphone Reader Tablet Laptop/Desktop Social

Plan meals and get shopping list X X X X X X X X X X

Read articles for helpful tips and tricks X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Find Recipes X X X X X X X X X

Product Review X X X X X X

Cooking tools X X X X X

Food storage (lunch) X X X

Find information about safe foods while eating out.

X X X

Communicate with other like her X X X X X X X X X X X X

User generated recipes X X X X X X X X X

Bulk Food Purchases for hypoallergenic products

X

X - CelineX - Amy X - ChrisX - Erin

Dara Pressley - @uxdivaExperience Design Canvas

Persona

ProblemI want to share my recipes

Erin

Ideas Assumptions

Simple email like form to submit.

• Account profile to manage recipes

• Content form to add different parts of recipe

• Discussion area for recipe

• Rating system • Approval system for

posting • Community base

approval for posting • Follow or save a

shared recipe

Team

MinimumStakeholder team

• System should be easy for anyone to use

• Database may have to be updated to take in new information about recipes

• Database may have to be updated to take in new information about cooks.

• Kim • Andy • Ryan

• Cheryl • Rick


Planning, Personas & Storytelling

Personas should be leveraged for the planning of each new feature or benefit.

Simultaneously, removal of features to be weighed against the impact of those personas

Thank You

Dara Pressley @uxdiva