Create Great Personas and Use Them

Dara Pressley
@uxdiva
Create Great Personas
and Use Them
Digital Summit - Dallas: 2015

Dara Pressley - @uxdiva
Dara Pressley
Wife & Mother
“I love, love, love
talking about
personas!”
Experience Architect
Devices & Networks
• iMac
• iPad Mini
• iPhone 4s
• Kindle Fire
• Twitter
Previous Life
• Poet | Fiction Writer | Tech Writer
• Writing Instructor
• Computer Instructor
Hobbies
• Sims 3 - Oh Yeah!
• Reading
• Fiction writing
(sometimes)
• What ever my kids or
husband want to do
(mostly)
Goals
To one day finish my
novel!
Fun Fact
My grandfather was an
official griot - a
Trinidadian storyteller.
Story
My mother wanted me to follow after her and become a computer programmer. But
a natural artist, I wanted to spend my time in writer’s workshop, theater, and the
dance studio. So I spent my life going back and forth between her world and mine.
Dancing from the time I was 2. Building my first computer game on an Atari when I
was 7. Having one of the first personal computers in our neighborhood — took up
most of the kitchen table. Enrolling in a performance arts school in 7th grade. Got a
Mac in 1984 and never looked back. Learned desktop layout to create a newspaper.
Majored in English and then Writing. Teaching classes both on fiction writing and
computing. On and on until finally my two worlds collided in the field of web
design.

What is a persona?

In 1995, noted pioneer software
developer, developed the concept,
which he named personas. The
technique was popularized for the
online business and technology
community in his 1999 book.

Personas are multidimensional representations of real users. The
Experience Community remains divided on whether they are based on
empirical data or the imaginations of the author. Cooper often writes
that the persona should at least be inspired by a real person.

It may seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most
effective way to satisfy a broad population.
- Cooper

Why not just design for everyone
The most successful products of the
20th and 21st century were those
that we developed with a single
target audience.
• 3m Post-It Note
• Rolling Luggage
• Facebook
80% of people hated the 1999
Dodge Ram. But the 20% who
loved it made it into a best seller.

“We found in the past that if they didn’t understand the buyer,
designers would just go off and design something for themselves.”
- Moray Callum,
executive director of Ford Americas design

Before Creating the Car,
Ford Designs the Driver
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/automobiles/19design.html?_r=0
ANTONELLA is an attractive 28-year old woman who lives in Rome.
Her life is focused on friends and fun, clubbing and parties.

Zombie Personas
In a 2010 Bar Camp Presentation
on Zombie personas, Tom Allison
states:
•UX in the Real World: There's
no such thing as "No
Persona”
•When the team doesn’t take
the time create personas,
Zombies are created instead
Characteristics of a Zombie
•They thrive in obscurity
•They’re not really “alive” to
the project but they are still
hard to kill
•They don’t seem that
dangerous but they’ll eat the
brains of your team
•They are afraid of the light of
the “collaborative” day

Basically, if your team can’t agree on the who the end
users is, much time and energy will be wasted arguing
over features that may not even be the right.

How to create powerful personas

Base them on real people
•Unless you have a lot of experience in character development
(Any fiction writers out here)
•Using real people helps to assure that you creating believable personas
•Who’s motivations, goals, and frustrations make sense

How to get
real people
๏ User interviews are great —
preferred!
๏ But also look around your own
network of friends and
acquaintances
Kim
Simone
Kevin
Haley

No useless details
•If my CustomInk persona like longs walks on the beach
•She better be wearing her custom apparel to commemorate the
occasion

Celine
Mother
Problem: Kids with food allergies
Need: Tips and tools to help care
for them.
Desire: Easy and Quick
Proto-Persona
No time or budget? No Excuses.
Develop over time as more is
learned about that user.
The most important thing is that
the team agrees on who they are
designing for.

Using Personas

I want to create a site that helps
people with their food allergies

Stop right there

Before we plan a single feature or requirement.
Let’s get our personas to help us out.
Stop right there

Celine
Wife & Mother
Celine’s Story
“The only thing we
are not allergic to
is air!”
Lawyer
Attributes
Cooking Skills
Amount of time for cooking
Amount of time for shopping
Social Connections
Low Med Hi
Devices & Networks
• Macbook Pro
• iPad Air
• iPhone 5c
• Kindle White
• Twitter
• Google +
Frustrations
• Becoming a short order cook
• Not having proper ingredients on hand
• Children don’t like the “new” food
• Sending food to parties
• Not sure what to shop for
• Eating out
• School Lunch
Goals
Celine would like to be
able to find her family
health meals that fit their
dietary needs. She also
wants the creation
process to be quick to fit
with her busy schedule.
Social
Celine is well connected
social and will use her
network for tips and
advice. She would be
very likely to share
anything she learned with
network.
Scenario
Celine goes grocery shopping >> at the store she searches for food
to make for the next few days >> her children keep adding food to
her cart >> her bill is a lot more than expected >> dinner that night
is a mix of several different meals for the different allergies.
Celine is a very busy corporate lawyer. She is also a wife and
mother of 2 young children - a son 5 and daughter 3. She
struggles to find a balance between her home and work life.
Celine has recently discovered that her family suffers from various
food allergies. Some of which are life threaten. No one has
exactly the same line up of allergies and she is not sure how to
feed everyone. To make matters worse, her children are picky
eaters.

Each persona should have at least one
scenario planned out for them.
•Some of these come directly from
the persona document
•Brainstorm for additional scenarios
that make sense to their personality
and motivations
•Don’t worry yet about it fits what you
do
http://trello.com

Celine goes shopping

Email meal plan
& Shopping list

Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods

Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
Teach children to read labels

Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
Time savers and helpful
products

Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
Single meals that work
for everyone
products

Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
Replacing
ingredients to
make the foods
they’re used to
Single meals that work
for everyone
products

User Pathways

Celine plans her menu
(mother persona)
Celine is putting together her meal plan for the
week in preparation for going to the grocery
store.
Home Login Personal Plan
Search & Results
Shopping List
Shopping List
Annotations
1 2 3
4
5
6
7
1) Home
Celine opens the home page
Celine expects to see her menu plan
OR login functionality
2) Login
Celine logs in to the website. Her page
is refreshed to her personal plan page.
Login functionality needs to exist
3) Personal Plan page
Celine reviews the menu plan created
for her. She knows that some of the
meals would not work for her family,
and wants to change them.
Ability to personalize menu.
4) Search
Celine searches for menu options.
After finding one that looks interesting
she clicks on it to view more
5) Recipe page
The recipe looks perfect. Celine saves
the recipe to her personal recipe book
and adds to menu plan.
Ability to save and add to plan.
6) Shopping List
Celine Exports her meal plan to the
shopping list. She doesn’t need
everything and wants to adjust the list
Ability to tweak list
7) Shopping list - mobile
At the store, Celine reviews her list as she
shops.
Recipe Page

Convergent Ideas

Prioritize Content
Celine wants to... Smartphone Reader Tablet Laptop/Desktop Social
Plan meals and get shopping list X X X X X X X X X X
Read articles for helpful tips and tricks X X X X X X X X X X X X X
Find Recipes X X X X X X X X X
Product Review X X X X X X
Cooking tools X X X X X
Food storage (lunch) X X X
Find information about safe foods
while eating out.
X X X
Communicate with other like her X X X X X X X X X X X X
User generated recipes X X X X X X X X X
Bulk Food Purchases for
hypoallergenic products
X
X - Celine
X - Amy
X - Chris
X - Erin

Experience Design Canvas
Persona
Problem
I want to share my recipes
Erin
Ideas Assumptions
Simple email like form
to submit.
• Account profile to
manage recipes
• Content form to
add different parts
of recipe
• Discussion area for
recipe
• Rating system
• Approval system for
posting
• Community base
approval for posting
• Follow or save a
shared recipe
Team
Minimum
Stakeholder team
• System should be
easy for anyone to
use
• Database may have
to be updated to
take in new
information about
recipes
• Database may have
to be updated to
take in new
information about
cooks.
• Kim
• Andy
• Ryan
• Cheryl
• Rick

Planning, Personas & Storytelling
Personas should be leveraged for the planning of each new feature or
benefit.
Simultaneously, removal of features to be weighed against the impact of
those personas

Thank You
Dara Pressley
@uxdiva

Create Great Personas and Use Them

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