Persona Pathways

Dara Pressley @uxdiva

Persona Pathways

Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

Just past the waterfront in Downtown Seattle, Western and Elliot Avenues merge into one. They had been running parallel for some time, but like most streets downtown curve with the angle of the Sound.


The two streets come together from two different angles on a steep incline. City Engineers in planning this merge had to consider exactly how the traffic should come together. Most of all, they had to plan for the pedestrian traffic with sidewalks and crosswalks.


Pedestrian Pathway

• People didn’t want to walk all the way to the corner.

• They wanted to take the shortest route possible to the other street, even though that route - muddy and steep - was harder to walk.

• It was faster and got them to their desired goal.


๏ If engineers had researched pedestrian behavior they would have known what was going to happen. In fact, there are many street corners that show evidence of this behavior.

๏ The engineers could have created a sidewalk that wrapped through the grass, that was easier to walk or stroll for accessibility needs.


There is another corner in Leesburg. The two streets are not as challenging as the one in Seattle. The street is flat, and the pattern is quite typical. But the block is long and on the other side is a strip mall with IHOP and Walmart.


Pedestrian Pathway

Again, people created for themselves the pathway that fastest for reaching their goal. It just so happens that this lot belongs to a church. Therefore, private property. The solution is not the same as the first. There is a restriction in place.

The goal this time - is not to make the path easier - but to keep people off the grass. Maybe with a simple fence or hedge.


In both these cases, understanding the user wants and goals would have been helpful in creating a better plan for the street.


Touch points with users๏ User Research

๏ Focus Groups

๏ Interviews

๏ User Testing


But it's not enough. In between these touch points, the team often forgets to include the user in the conversation.

Yet, the user is the most important stakeholder in the product design.


PersonasPersonas are a great proxy for including the user is all your conversations and documentation.


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

In 1983, while creating the project management app Plan It, Cooper had interviewed some users for the program. While development, he would have conversations with himself as one of those users, Kathy. Cooper states that this was really his first persona. He formalized the processed the process in 1995 for a project he was working on for Bank of America.


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 it can be

hard to create believable fictional characters.

• 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


KimBridgespan needed personas that represented both philanthropist and non-profit organizations.

This particular persona represented one part of a team. Her husband was the wage earner. Her job was to coordinate their social activities and their philanthropy.

She was based the mother of one of my childhood friends.


SimoneWhile working on a project for Science Magazine. I created the persona of a student researcher who was pre-med majoring in Molecular Biology.

She was based on my sister.


HaleyAlso for Science Magazine. Erin was a hobby scientist. She did not study science formally beyond college requirements. But she has a deep love of nature and loves reading the magazine for information.

She was based on the project manager.


KevinFor CustomInk, I created this persona of a teacher who was responsible for coordinating the efforts of getting custom t-shirts for different school events, including Field Day and the Dare Program.

For this persona, I interviewed the teacher in my children’s school who did this.


For every project I’ve worked on, I’ve found at least 1 person I knew that was the perfect user for that product.


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.


Telling the Story


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

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 if it fits what you do

• Anything too out of scope can be saved in an “outer space” list.

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

Replacing ingredients to make the foods they’re used to

Single meals that work for everyone

Time savers and helpful products

Teach children to read labels


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

As our main persona, the needs of Celine are paramount. However, secondary personas may lead to some commonalities that overlap. For instance, restaurant guides would be helpful for both Celine and Chris. If Chris’ needs can be easily integrated into her pathway, we can take care of both experiences.


User Stories

The user wants to login to get features associated with her account.

Instead of the generic user story, use your persona.

The Celine wants to login to get features associated with her account.


Test Cases

Celine is able to login

Erin is able to login

Writing your test cases by persona assures that the development has considered all the scenarios.

In this case, that the user levels of member as chef have different permissions.


Journey Maps• Journey maps are the Ace in our tool

kit. In that I mean they can be both the first and the last

•So far, the workflow I have shown assumes that there hadn’t yet been a site created.

• In that case, I could use journey maps on competitor sites to learn what does and doesn’t work for them before I start.

• If I do have a product already, then journey maps should definitely be created around the current product as a first step

•A combination of maps done around our own product, competitor products and comparative products will give the best understanding about where we can really improve.


Journey maps allow us to capture the users reaction to the product or services as they step through it.

The map usually includes: •The path they take through the site •What activity they are performing •Their emotional reaction •Their thoughts around the process.


Celine’s JourneyLogin Reviewing

Thoughts

Emotions

Path

Looks like a cool place. I could really use some of these features

I hope this isn’t going to post anything to my Twitter.

Looks Yummy


Once those items are captured, the map is completed by the team by adding: •Recommendations for improvement •Any examples of who is doing this well


In the end, Persona Storytelling is the best was to make sure your users are considered at each step in the process of adding or even removing features.

This process assures that we create the right pedestrian pathways.

Thank You

Dara Pressley @uxdiva

Persona Pathways

Design