provisional persona workshop 1.0

Provisional* PersonasWorkshop

Mo Goltz

*AKA Proto-Personas, Ad Hoc Personas, Strawman Personas, Skeletal Personas, or Pragmatic Personas

2:15

Provisional Personas These are your current best guesses as to describing and understanding who is currently using (or will use) your product and why.

They are not full, research backed personas.

Why expose what you know, and what you don’t about your users

Benefits

When you use this process -‐ you will come across things you just don’t know. !For those things that you don’t know and that do ma;er, you can create a backlog of research that you need to do. !This backlog will help inform and focus subsequent research.

Benefitsability to test hypothesis and assumpAons you already have !target areas that will require more inquiry !gives the team a structure for collecAng and organizing informaAon as it comes up !help your team understand personas and why they are important !help your team pracAce and perfect persona creaAon methods

It’s recommend that you create provisional personas whether or not you plan to collect first-‐hand data about your target users.

1Agenda

Identification & Segmentation

Attribute Profiling (discrete)

Spectrum Profiling (continuous)!

Personification

234

0:15

1:00

1:15

0:20

break

Stage 1

Identification "& Segmentation

0:15

PurposeDetermine who uses your soGware. What kinds or types of people are they? How would you divide this crowd into meaningful groups?

Disclaimer

No ma;er how informed or thorough the reasoning, there are always mulAple ways to create segments. !

There is no one right way to segment your users….but that’s OK. !As long as you determine users that are important to you and your business , you will have succeeded, no ma;er how you segment your user base.

It is more important that a persona be precise than accurate. That is, it is more important to define the persona in great and specific detail than that the persona be the precisely correct one.

– Alan Cooper

PrecisionAccuracy

Identification & Segmentation Activities

1. think of all the people who currently use, or could use your so5ware how are users typically categorized

how do you think they should be categorized

industry and roles are a good place to start

2. name each type of user, and put each kind of user on its own s7cky note, then place it on the wall

3. cluster, group, and eliminate duplicates as needed Discuss whether there are too many or too few categories

consolidate or divide personas as needed

Don’t spend too long debaAng this, as the number of categories will evolve over the course of this exercise

5 min

10 min

Stage 2

Attribute Profiling

1:00

PurposeHow would you describe they types of people that use your so4ware? As a team, what are the common, average, or dominant characteris<cs that are meaningful and make each type of users different than the others? Describe these traits as discrete data points.

43 years old 30% of users I need to make the quota this month

Attribute Profiling Activities

Get out four colors of s7cky notes

Color one: demographics and environment

Color two: responsibiliAes, needs / wants, moAvaAons, and goals

Color three: pain points

Color four: design imperaAves


For each type of user determine 1. color one: demographics, and environment

Gender

Age

Size of populaAon as a percentage or raw number (best guess)

size of company and/or office (best guess)

fill out s7cky notesone concept per notebrain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more

place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard

stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team

cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier

over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering

determine if anything is missing

5 min

5 min


For each type of user determine 2. color two: responsibili7es, needs / wants, mo7va7ons, and goals

I have to___

I need to ___

I want to ___







10 min

5 min


For each type of user determine 3. color three: pain points

I find __ difficult

I am frustrated by __

I would be able to do a be;er job if ___ was different

___ ruins my day







5 min

10 min


For each type of user determine 4. color four: design impera7ves

what does the product have to do in order to make them happy and successful? Be as specific as possible.







5 min

10 min

Profiling Activities

5. for each user type, consolidate all affinity diagrams onto an piece of paper folded into quadrants

demographics & environment

responsibilities, needs / wants,

motivations, and goals

pain points design imperatives

5 min

leave blank

for now

Stage 3

Spectrum Profiling

1:15

PurposeHow would you describe they types of people that use your so4ware? As a team, what are the common, average, or dominant characteris<cs that are meaningful and make each type of users different than the others? Describe these traits as a spectrum.

texts oftentexts infrequently

Spectrum Profiling Activities

For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 1. choose 5 -‐ 10 aAributes you think are important or maAer more than others

infrequent taks frequent tasks

short tasks long tasks

nega<ve a@tude posi<ve a<tude

knows nothing about tech expert in tech

rookie pro

General

10 min


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 1. choose 5 -‐ 10 aAributes you think are important or maAer more than others

relies on research that’s provided does own personal research

avoids jargon with client uses jargon

reluctant to new technology embraces new tech

few clients many clients

small accounts large accounts

less experience more experience

focused on risk management focused on returns

infrequent transac<ons frequent transac<ons

does what clients ask nego<ates with client

Specific


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 2. share the 5 -‐ 10 aAributes each team member chose by puNng them up on the

whiteboard

3. consolidate the numerous spectrums into one set of 5-‐10

5 min

10 min


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 4. each team member places a a uniquely colored dot on the spectrums where they

think is most appropriate

5. con7nue for all 5-‐10 spectrums

5 min

5 min


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 6. stand back and no7ce paAerns (if Ame allows)15 min


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 6. stand back and no7ce paAerns (if Ame allows) If there is immediate consensus, minimal discussion will be required.

If, however, there are outliers or a broad distribuAon of opinion, the team should be encouraged to discuss and debate those issues.

Do pa;erns in the spectrum voAng reveal that perhaps what has been thought of as one persona should be split into two, or do you just not understand enough to come to an agreement on what this type of user is like

!for more info: h;p://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Persona+CreaAon

Designing for the Digital Age: pages 247 -‐ 265


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 7. consolidate all ‘vo7ng’ dots into one dot per spectrum

If there is immediate consensus, minimal discussion will be required.

If, however, there are outliers or a broad distribuAon of opinion, the team should be encouraged to discuss and debate those issues.



10 min


For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 7. place the 5 -‐ 10 spectrums on the back of the persona sheet

10 min

Stage 4

Personification

0:25

PurposeAt this point you have a bunch of user types, but they are not yet a provisional persona. Personifying makes each user type more a more concrete and tangible example

Personification ActivitiesFor each type of user determine name

descripAve label (i.e. impaAent shopper)

strong quote in ‘their own words’

5 min







10 min

Personification Activities1.fill out the personifica7on aAributes on the front of your persona sheet in the top le5 quadrant

5 min

name descriptive label

strong quote

End of the Workshopwhat’s next

After the Workshop

Validate & Refine

Validate & Refine Activities

Have others (who weren’t in the persona workshop) review your provisional personas. People could be

Others in your company who frequently interact with end users

Subject Ma;er Experts outside the company

Actual users

Ask Them

Are these the people you interact with

Is anyone missing?

Are these really all separate people? Have you captured “differences that make a difference”

Additional Sourceshttp://www.infoq.com/presentations/pragmatic-personas!http://vimeo.com/70214000!http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Personas!http://zenexmachina.wordpress.com/tag/pragmatic-personas/!http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/03/the-dangers-of-design-by-user.php!http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/personas_empath.html!http://blogs.forrester.com/jonathan_browne/09-11-04-assumption_personas_handle_care!http://www.forrester.com/Assumption+Personas+Help+Overcome+Hurdles+To+Using+ResearchBased+Design+Personas/fulltext/-/E-RES53874!http://uxmag.com/articles/using-proto-personas-for-executive-alignment!http://learningspacetoolkit.org/needs-assessment/working-with-data/creating-personas/!http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/avoiding-half-baked-personas/!http://uxoslo.com/2013/10/14/proto-personas/!http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/07/personas_and_twinkies!http://boxesandarrows.com/building-a-data-backed-persona/!http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/ad_hoc_personas/!http://www.thingsontop.com/remixing-power-adhoc-personas-1020.html

http://www.thingsontop.com/remixing-power-adhoc-personas-1020.html

provisional persona workshop 1.0

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