Usable Stories: Discovering Contextual Insights

Guiseppe Getto

East Carolina University

gettog@ecu.edu

What I’ll Cover

• What are personas?

• Where do personas come from?

• How do personas improve usability?

• The story/test/story method

What are personas?

“A persona is a way to model, summarize and communicate research about

people who have been observed or researched in some way. A persona is

depicted as a specific person but is not a real individual; rather, it is

synthesized from observations of many people. Each persona represents a

significant portion of people in the real world and enables the designer to

focus on a manageable and memorable cast of characters, instead of

focusing on thousands of individuals.”

– Shlomo Goltzhttp://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/06/a-closer-look-

at-personas-part-1/

Example persona

Where do personas come from?

• DATA

– Interviews with users

– Usability tests

– Analytics

– Surveys

How do personas improve usability?

• Helps design team SEE users as real people

– What are their pain points?

– What are the messy, qualitative traits that make

them THAT TYPE of user?

– What do they find most engaging?

– What do they hate?

The story/test/story method

“To design the best UX, pay attention to what users do, not

what they say.”

-Jakob Nielsen

“I barely have time to test with three users, not to mention

interviewing them!”

-Every Non-famous UX Designer

“I don’t do separate storytelling expeditions.”

- Whitney Quesenbery

The story/test/story method

• Before the test: Who are you? Why did you agree to test

out this application? What unmet needs do you have?

What apps do you currently use?

• Test with key tasks

• After the test: What was the most difficult? What did you

find most engaging? What does the app do best? If you

could change one thing, what would it be, and why?