I presented this at the Ark Group Conference held in Melbourne in November 2008. It covers a brief outline of personas and how they can be used in industry, with several case-study examples Symplicit has worked on as a company. If you have any questions, get in touch!

1. Creating Personas: Designing for real people… Jodie Moule, Principal Consultant November, 2008

6. A scene from a stakeholder meeting… In our experience, feature X isn’t worth the investment. Our customers don’t want it… … but that’s not what we discussed in the kick-off meeting… Our contextual analysis revealed that feature X was not part of the users mental model the ROI simply isn’t there I still think customers would use feature X … I’d use it!

7. A scene from a stakeholder meeting… Yes, but are all our users like you? No, but I know what my customers want and this is important! But our users don’t need it. That is what the analysis shows… Forget everything you know about users – we need to be innovative!

8. A scene from a stakeholder meeting… Feature X stays in scope… are we done? ?!@$%!@*#!

12. You learn about your users through direct contact

13. Knowledge about your users must be actionable It is important to have clear findings that are memorable and actionable…or they are dismissed Personas put a face on user research Turning data into the kind of knowledge that leads to better user experiences and better websites and products

17. Personas…our stakeholders

18. Personas…

21. Case Study 1: WPOL today

30. Case Study 2: Integrated research & design

32. Case Study 2: Scenarios put personas to work

33. Case Study 2: Mobile platform drop-off points…

34. Case Study 2: Proposed purchase workflow…

38. Case Study 3: Telstra communication & collaboration