Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs€¦ · • User-centered design is used by UC Berkeley because it offers the most effective path to useful and usable products. •

Allison Bloodworth, Senior User Interaction Designer, Educational Technology Services, University of California - Berkeley

July 2, 2008

Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs

Agenda

• What is user-centered design?

• What are personas?

• Gathering data about users

• Creating personas

• Using personas in the design & development

process

What is user-centered design?

• User-centered design is a product development

methodology based on actual user needs, behaviors,

abilities and perceptions.

• User-centered design is used by UC Berkeley because it

offers the most effective path to useful and usable

products.

• Personas put a human face on the amorphous “user”

because they are based on actual user needs. They save

time by focusing development toward real use cases and

away from unlikely “edge” cases.

What’s in it for me?

• Programmers benefit from personas and user-centered design by

not having to write code that is not needed by the target users.

Who wants to make something that won't be used?

• Business analysts benefit from personas and user-centered

design because the goals, tasks, and needs of the target users are

well-defined for them. They don't have to imagine or invent.

User-centered design atBerkeley

• Focuses on understanding:

– Who are the users?

– What are their goals?

• Goals drive a person’s actions

• Tasks are things a person does in order to

accomplish his goals

– What are their pain points?

– What are their motivations?

• To drive system definition & design

Why focus on user goals vs.(current) tasks?

• “The way people do things today is often merely the

product of the obsolete systems and and organizations

they are forced to interact with, and typically bear little

resemblance to the way they would like to do things, or

they way they would be most effective.”

– About Face 3.0

• Just putting existing processes on-line often is not enough

• Improving processes is often the best way help users

achieve their goals

User-centered design atBerkeley

User Research

Modeling

Requirements Definition

UI Framework DefinitionUI DesignDevelopment Support

User Research Modeling Requirements Definition UI Framework Definition UI Design Development Support

User-centered design at Berkeley



User-centered design at Berkeley

User Research

• Ethnography and empathic research

– Observation & interviews

• Study users in their context

• Centered on users’ goals and activities

• Look for patterns


Modeling

• Make sense of research findings

– Personas

– Mental models

– Use cases - current or future processes

– Use case frequency matrix

– Activity diagrams - more complex processes

– Artifact models

• Helps gain consensus early on…before any design

happens

• Provides shared language & vision


Persona: Michael the ModeratelySeasoned Professional

Source: Todd Warfel "Data Driven Personas”: http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-personas


Requirements Definition

• Refined based on:

– User needs

– Business goals

– Customer needs

• Context Scenarios

– New processes, context of use

– How users complete an activity


Scenarios

• A design technique used to envision future use of a system

– Focusing on how users can achieve their goals

– Helps designers & developers understand how system

will really be used

• A story about a particular persona interacting with the

system

• May be based on a use case, or a set of use cases

• Can be used for usability testing

• Scenarios become progressively more detailed


Types of Scenarios

1. Context Scenarios

– High-level, no interaction details

– Focus is on how the user can achieve her goals

– Part of Requirements Definition phase

2. Key path scenarios

– Incorporate functional and data needs into the

scenarios

– Part of the next phase: UI Framework Definition phase


Example Scenarios

• Context Scenario– Lisa is in lecture and realizes she’s confused when the instructor starts

talking about mitosis. She takes note of the time.

– Later that day she opens up her bSpace course site and goes directly tothe webcast for that day and reviews the portions of lecture via thewebcast she needed clarification on.

• Key Path Scenario– Lisa is in lecture and realizes she’s confused when the instructor starts

talking about mitosis. She takes note of the time.

– Later that day she opens up her bSpace course site clicks on the “MostRecent Webcast” link. bSpace switches to the “Use Webcast” Viewand the webcast for the day plays.

– Lisa looks at her notes to see the time she noted earlier, and enters itinto the “Lecture Time” field and presses “Enter.” The lecture jumpsforward to the point where the instructor was talking about mitosis.

UI Framework Definition

• High level design

– What pages do we have?

– What panes need to exist within the pages and how dothey work together?

– What design elements are included in each page, pane,etc.?

– Should be a holistic view of the design, not too detailed

• Key path scenarios

• Allows for iterating on the details

• Start talking about technical feasibility


UI design

“Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose

meaningful order”

• Interaction design AND visual design

– How does it behave?

– What does it look like?

– How does it make users feel?

• Wireframes, mock-ups, and/or prototypes


Development Support

• Constant communication

– No throwing it over the wall

• Continuous iterations as we learn more from

development


What are personas?

• Basic definition

– “A persona is a user archetype you can use to help

guide decisions about product features, navigation,

interactions, and even visual design.” - Kim Goodwin,

Cooper

• User models

– Models can consolidate complex information into an

(easy to remember) abstraction

– Remembering & making sense of all the raw data would

be impossible without them


Source: Sakai


Persona: Sarah Windsor,Overwhelmed Faculty

From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Sarah+Windsor+-+Primary+Persona

From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Sarah+Windsor+-+Primary+Persona

Persona do’s and don’ts

• Should:

– be based on user research

– be based primarily on qualitative research

– be focused on users’ goals

– be based on common behavior patterns

– be specific to your design context or problem

– come to life, and seem like real people

• Should not:

– be focused on stereotypes or generalizations

– be an ‘average’ of observed behavior patterns

– be based only on user roles

– be based only on information gathered from subject matterexperts, as they cannot completely represent end users


Why use personas?

• Focus

• Empathy

• Gaining consensus

• Avoiding the elastic user


Why use personas?

• Focus

– Designing for too many different types of users makes a

product too complex to truly satisfy any of them

– Pleasing some users often conflicts with pleasing

others--must have a way to make choices

– Helps prevent focusing the design on:

• edge cases

• averages


Why use personas?

• Empathy

– People are wired to be attuned to other people

– Helps put yourself in the users’ shoes

• Helps avoid self-referential design

– Facilitates the use of role playing to:

• make design decisions

• evaluate designs


Why use personas?

• Gaining consensus

– Give the team a shared understanding (early on!) of

who they users are and what they need

• Without personas, the team may be disagreeing about who

the users are, rather than actual design decisions, without

even knowing it

– Gives the team a tool to reason through design

decisions


Why use personas?

• Avoiding the elastic user

– If the users haven’t been clearly defined, they may

stretch to fit the needs of the product team

• “Our students are very tech-savvy, and will certainly be able

to figure that out.”

• “Students just won’t be able to understand how to do this.

We need to create a wizard.”


Types of personas

• Design Personas

– User Personas (most common)

– Customer/Buyer Personas

– Served Personas

– Negative Personas

– Provisional Personas

• Other types of Personas

– Marketing Personas

– Strategy Personas

– Organization Personas


Personas usually contain…

• Goals

• Attitudes (related to your context)

• Behaviors & Tasks (in your context)

• Photo

• Name

• Tagline

• Demographic info

• Skill level

• Environment


• Scenarios

Types of personas

• Primary persona

– A persona whose needs must be satisfied

– Multiple primary personas require separate interfaces

• Secondary, tertiary, etc. personas

– Personas whose needs should be considered after

those of the primary persona(s)

– A persona is made secondary because their needs can

be mostly met if the design is focused on the primary

persona


Primary Persona: Ernest theEngaged Employee

Personal Information

Profession: Data Architect

Age: 43

Background: Originally from upstate New York

Education: BS in Library Science from Columbia. Is continuing his education informally, by sitting in on classes at UCBerkeley’s School of Information whenever he can. Attends industry conferences about once a year.

UCB Background: “Fell” into a technical position at UC Berkeley 8 years ago after working in libraries.

Home Life: Has been married for 15 years and has two children, ages 6 and 13. Their family has a pet Cockatoo. He isinteresting in volunteering some time at his 6-year-old’s Montessori School in Berkeley.

Hobbies: Photography (learning Photoshop)

Personality: Efficient, detail-oriented, dedicated. Enjoys meeting new people and learning about them.

User Goals

• To be as efficient as possible at work so he can spend as much quality time with his family as possible

• To make more money

• To continue to learn

• To improve his photography & perhaps make it more of a business

Pain Points

• After the IST re-org, some processes have been unclear, and he’s often had to hunt around for the right person to getthings done.

• Too many passwords to remember

• Too many collaborative tools being used in organization

• Information he needs is all over the place, not organized efficiently

Site Objectives

• Help Ernest find the information he needs quickly & easily

• Clarify the IST/OCIO information available instead of adding just another site to the confusion

• Help Ernest learn about and connect with the IST/OCIO community

“Work is important, but not my whole life.”


Sakai Persona Map

From: http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/ENC/Sakai+Personas


Methods used for gatheringinformation for personas

• User observation

• Contextual inquiries

• Interviews

• Focus groups

• Diary studies

• Existing data

• Existing knowledge


How are personas created?

• Persona hypothesis

• User research

• Identify behavioral variables/attributes

• Persona scales

• Choose personas

• Write personas

• Communicate personas


Persona hypothesis

• A starting point to help determine what types of users toresearch

• Created before talking to end users

– Based on information gathered from stakeholders, SME’s, yourpersonal knowledge, and review of existing literature

– Hypothesized behavior patterns

– Should not be based purely on demographics

• Differentiate users based on needs and behaviors

– More user types can be added later if research points to othertypes

– Often map to roles in a non-consumer domain (e.g. education)

• Can be just a rough outline/list of user goals & behaviorpatterns you expect to see


Fluid CM research: Userbehavior/characteristic matrices• User types (Roles)

• Application (CMS) use

• Class structure

• Group size

• Technical level

• Country/region

• Type of institution


From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/vgIa

User research

• Interview & observe users in the context of their work

• Use focus structure document to guide each user visit

• Take detailed notes & photos

– Capture interesting quotes

– Use symbols in notes to organize info

• Process ‘raw’ notes into a more categorized & synthesized

format

• Create summaries of notes


Raw notes

- Works both at home and in her (very organized) office; carriesher PC back and forth

- Seminar: posts multiple discussion questions each week, hasstudents respond to 1 each week. Part of participation gradewhich is 25% of their total grade.

- Would like students to have a one stop shop where they can getall info for her class: website, bSpace, Library Resources

- Throughout the semester she puts all her grades in Excel; she hasmostly quizzes and exams, and only has a few assignments

– Wants to be able to save copies of files having to do with students onher local drive

• Helpful info if students ask for recommendations later

- She’s usually only a week ahead of the class in her preparation,which may change in the future when she’s taught the class more


Categorized Notes - ContentManagement

• Interview/Observation Setup

• Persona Info (personal details)

• Context of work

• Teaching style/format

• Computer/Technology use

• Use cases/Activities

• Pain points/Opportunities/Time

wasters

• User goals

• Typical/Good/Bad day

• Course Details

• Schedule/Organization

• General CMS/LMS use &activities

• Types of course materials

• Communication

• Content Reuse

• Photos


Identify variables

• Personas should be based on observed behavior patterns

• Identify the behavioral variables which differentiate your

interviewees

• Two by two comparison - UIE.com method

– Read two randomly chosen summaries

– List attributes that make interviewees similar & different

– Replace one of the summaries with another randomly chosen

one

– Repeat until all summaries are read

• Choose endpoints of scales


Persona scales


Distinctions• Roles

• Support running class

• Timing of posting materials

• Primary type of communication

• Number of computers

• Overall goal

– change the field

– teach students

– get published

• Previous LMS use

• Years teaching

• Years at current institution

• Large, small or both classes

• Discipline

From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Content+Management+Research+Models

Choose personas

• Determine list of potential personas based on common

behavioral patterns

• Sanity check

– Do they make sense? Do they reflect what we’ve seen? Are

there too many to be useful? Will they help us make design

decisions?

• Finalize initial persona list


Write personas

• Draft persona characteristics & goals for each persona– If possible, all info should come from actual user research (your notes)

– All persona information should be relevant to your design context

• Check persona set– Anything missing?

– Any redundant personas?

• Write the persona descriptions– Some bulleted lists, some narrative

– You may have multiple formats depending on your team’s needs

– A few personal details OK• Try to relate them to your design

• Add them last

• Choose primary, secondary, etc. persona(s)


Ahmad Yousef

(Faculty - Tenure-track History)

GeorgeMcFadden

(Online Instructor- Journalism)

Instructor Personas

Catalina De Silva

(Faculty - GSI Manager

in Spanish)

Robin McCoy

(Faculty - Business School)

Ahmad Yousef

(Faculty - Tenure-track History)

Sergio Rossi

(Graduate Teaching

Assistant - Urban

Affairs & Planning)

Stacey Pearson

(Graduate Teaching

Assistant - Biochemistry)

Henry Sibley

(Longtime Faculty -Chemistry)

George McFadden

(Online Instructor -Journalism)

Fluid Content ManagementPersonas




Student Personas

Christy Gonzola(Undergraduate Student

- Molecular & Cell

Biology)

Andy Wright(Graduate Student -

Information Studies)

Ashley Myles(Undergraduate

Student - Acheology)

Shaina Wiseman(Graduate Student -

Land Development)




Instructional Support Staff Personas

Michael Demsky

(Departmental Support - Biology)

Anita Stalmach(Departmental Pedagogy

Support - Instructional

Designer)



Stacy Pearson - TA Trainer/Graduate Teaching Assistant


"I'm all manual. Papers,

folders, and binders.”

Main Points:

Uses physical folders, binders,

and drawers to organize her

reading materials

Teaches TAs how to teach

students

Concerned about Mac-PC

compatibility when transferring

files

Frustrated that she doesn't

have access to the LMS her

students are using

• Characteristics

– Lives in the suburbs, about 40 minutes outside the city bycar, with her parents

– Is a 3rd year PhD student with a specialty in Biochemistry,and has been TAing since 2004

– Comes in everyday at 6:30am and spends all day oncampus until around 5pm. She does most of the work oncampus, in the lab and in her office, and none at home.

– She coordinates the TA training program where she trainsTAs through the office of Teaching Advancement. Withother coordinators, she organizes workshops for TAs onhow to teach students.

– She uses Blackboard as a TA but is not a huge fan. Sheonly login when she gets an email notification withimportant announcements.

– She uses a highly paper-based file organization system.She prints out course materials and organizes them intobinders in chronological order.

– If she needs to take files home, she emails her files to herYahoo account.

• Goals

– Get her PhD

– Become a better teacher

From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/fY4

Communicate personas

• Introductory workshop

• Posting one or two page summaries in work areas

• Laminated sheet containing short summaries of all

personas

• Persona deck of cards

• Have everyone put a persona on their door to

represent who they identify with

• Set up a work area for a persona


Persona Resources• Books

– About Face 3.0

– The Persona Lifecycle

– Practical Personas: The User Is Always Right

• Presentations

– UIE's Building Robust Personas in 30 Days or Less:http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/building_personas/

– "data driven design research personas:"http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-design-research-personas

– "The user is always right: Making Personas Work for Your Site:"http://www.slideshare.net/MulderMedia/the-user-is-always-right-making-personas-work-for-your-site

• Articles

– Building a data-backed persona:http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-a-data

– Personas vs. User Descriptions:http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/11/15/personas-vs-user-descriptions-apples-vs-tomatoes/

Questions?

• Let’s talk during the conference!

• Check out the Fluid UX Toolkit:

http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UX+Toolkit

• Contact info:

– Allison Bloodworth, University of California, Berkeley:

[email protected]

Persona Example: MatthewJohnson, USDA SeniorManager

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS),

http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html


Documents

Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs€¦ · • User-centered design is used by UC Berkeley because it offers the most effective path to useful and usable products. •