The document summarizes a project at Mayo Clinic to develop personas - archetypal user profiles - to better understand their employees and design resources to meet their needs. The project involved conducting over 180 interviews with subject matter experts over 560 hours to gather data on employee tasks, needs, and preferences. The team analyzed the data in workshops and created around 40 personas. Key lessons learned included the importance of teamwork and stakeholder engagement, managing large amounts of user data, and that being the first to undertake a major project came with challenges of being a pioneer.
12. 12
Business Case
Lack of reliable research about employees:
How do they work?
What are their needs?
Products/services for employees needs to be
better designed/defined
16. 16
ProjectScope
Originally started out as intranet-only, but
grew (based on HFI recommendation)
Not intended to be a singular resource
for medium- or high-risk projects
20. 20
Technologist
Physician/Surgeon
NP / PA
Nurse Anesthetist
Food Service
Administrator
Medical Secretary
Therapist (PM&R / OT)
Medical Dispatcher
Pharmacist
Operations Manager
Interpreter
Dietetics Tech / Aid
Appointment Coordinator
Clinical Assistant
Patient Service Rep
Dean
Medical Program Director
Faculty/Course Instructor
Program/Education Coord.
Student
Administrator
Operations Mgr.
Admin Assistant
Scientist
Investigator
Research Tech
Research Study Coordinator
Research Fellow
Research Associate
Administrator
Operations Manager
Admin Assistant
PRACTICE
RESEARCH
Analyst (HR / BA / IT)
MES Educator
HR Service Partner
Engineering
Janitor / Custodian
Maintenance
Patient Transporter
Courier
Material Handler
Lab Tech
Lab Assistant
Tech Specialist
Customer Svc Specialist
Multifunction Task Lead
Admin Assistant
Administrator
Operations Mgr./Supervisor
LABSSUPPORT
EDUCATION
21. 21
Technologist
Physician/Surgeon
NP / PA
Nurse Anesthetist
Food Service
Administrator
Medical Secretary
Therapist (PM&R / OT)
Medical Dispatcher
Pharmacist
Operations Manager
Interpreter
Dietetics Tech / Aid
Appointment Coordinator
Clinical Assistant
Patient Service Rep
PRACTICE
a) Senior UI / UX Designer at Mayo Clinic – Rochester, Minnesota, United States
b) Belong to a 13-person in-house team
c) Typical day:
-- Interaction lead for big strategic projects
-- Perform User Research
-- Write standards for web based communication
-- Most important: Evangelizer for human side of human-communication interaction
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| b) My name is Gianna Pfister-LaPin (just got married)
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a) First & largest integrated not-for-practice medical group practice in the world
b) 60,000 employees at 3 different locations
-- 7300 Physicians / Nurses / Scientists / Residents / Fellows / Other students
-- 52000 Non-clinical Allied Health staff
c) In 2012 saw over 1.2 million patients
a) Humanitarian patient care mission supported by decentralized intranet
b) Nobody owns it – my team considered the stewards
c) Support 8000 authors publishing 2000 websites
d) Universally non-technical people
e) Not sure of size but Google Search Appliance indexing 1.5 million pieces of content
a) Intranet is self-sustaining
b) Help with occasional strategic project
c) Department of Nursing – I jointed in 2009
d) Huge -- 750 hr to complete content inventory
a) Primary reason it was successful – great team
b) Multi-functional: IT, Human Resources, Media Support Services
c) Close-knit family -- NIDWIC
a) Project focus was always on the end user – bedside nurse
b) Hired a consultant to help me with IA duties – recommended personas
c) Became the first internal personas at Mayo Clinic
a) User centered design (personas) + dedicated team = intranet innovation
a) Review what a persona is
User research tool:
-- Distills important qualities about a population into a single archetype – easy to understand
-- Given enough description to feel human – photo, name, demographic info
-- Not “made up” or “fictional” – based on real research
a) When doing a design project, I try to get everyone on the team involved in user research
b) Timeline / budget doesn’t always allow this
c) Personas are a useful shortcut on low-risk projects – builds empathy
a) Nursing’s redesigned intranet site really impresses people
b) My team starts getting more and more requests to make a site like that
c) Colleagues & myself decide it’s time to pitch idea for institution-wide personas to our leadership
d) Need to answer the question: who are we?
Wrote up charter & made business case for project:
b) No real insight into employees – company too big / silos
c) Didn’t know working styles, preferences for receiving information
d) Tons of $$$ being spent on in-house development / purchasing of technology products without user needs analysis
e) IT saw usability as a line-item at the end of the project, not an up-front collaboration
a) co-sponsored by Media Support Services & Employee Communications
b) Recruited team of 11 from IT, HR, MSS – 6 core team members & 5 ad hoc interviewers
c) Recruited 9 stakeholders from across the organization
d) Hired Human Factors International to help
Two primary goals:
a) Discover employees’ typical tasks, working styles, how they wish to be communicated with
b) Document & create repository for everyone to use
Original project scope
Started as intranet only, later grew to encompass all mediums (digital and not)
b) Should not be considered stand-alone user research unless project is low-risk
Now what?
a) Personas were not being designed for a specific product/project
b) Didn’t know what qualities we wanted to document
-- Determined this through a giant “gamestorming” exercise conducted by HFI
c) Couldn’t figure out how many personas to shoot for -- Even consultant was at a loss
Org chart was one solution – we discovered Mayo has no org chart
Decided to follow the shields format
For each segment, we took the job titles with the largest number of employees.
(Team member in HR was crucial for getting this info)
This is why “less important” titles appear (janitor)
Note the duplication across segments – Administrator, Admin Assistant
Talk about that more later
Recruiting process:
For each job title, identify Subject Matter Expert – introduce project, ask for help
SME then recommends 5-7 employees in work area to interview
SME notifies interviewees & tells them about project, interview being scheduled
(Helps alleviate fear & uncertainty)
Interview Team then interviews the employee
Whatever you do, don’t be like these guys.
Held 6 data analysis workshops (6-8 hours each)
--Interview teams transcribed notes into excel template
--Attempted to derive a consolidated draft persona
--Negotiation important
--Occasionally had to go back to SME’s with questions
Some personas were collapsed across all segments (Administrators, Admin Assistants)
Persona project by the numbers:
560 hours of interviews include 180 hours of interviews, 1 hour of prep time, and 1 hour of follow-up time per interview.
It also includes the hours spent on SME interviews (40 hours)
50-60 hours of validation is based on 30 min per persona plus the documentation, discussion, and necessary revision.
The project came in under budget.
Here are all the personas
(One or two have been added/removed since these pictures were taken)
Intranet site crucial for spreading the word
-- Contains all 40 personas
-- Project background
-- Accolades & stories of success from customers / project managers
Learned so much from this project
Still learning – originally finished in 2012
-- Learning how to keep fresh
-- Learning how to explain to others how to use it
-- Learning how to use it myself
Intranet site crucial for spreading the word
-- Contains all 40 personas
-- Project background
-- Accolades & stories of success from customers / project managers
We should have used a better recordkeeping format
Changed scales, the interview protocol, etc. in the beginning
Lack of consistency between interviews
Data is very “dirty”, can’t do any statistical analysis on it w/o cleaning
Sucks when even the experts can’t help you
We figured it out, now we know how & can teach others
Love knowing about each other – easier to work in a large company
Love reading about themselves
Love making more informed decisions
To sum up this project, I’d like to leave you with an old Chinese proverb that goes:
“Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it. “