Using Personas and Scenarios as Design and Communication Tools

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Using Personas and Scenariosas Design and
Communication Tools A presentation to the
Technical Communicators Association of New
Zealand (TCANZ) Presented byBeverley
StevensDesignITwww.designit.co.nz
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Cooper U Practicum

• With support from Industry New Zealand, Beverley
  recently attended a 5-day workshop on Cooper's
  Goal-Directedmethodology at Cooper Interaction
  Design in California.
• There she met Alan Cooper, the author of
• The Inmates are Running the Asylum - Why Hi-Tech
  Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore
  the Sanity
• About Face The Essentials of User Interface
  Design
• as well as other members of the Cooper design
  team.
• See www.cooper.com

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What are personas?

• A persona is
• An archetype that represents the needs and
  goalsof a group of users
• Based on observed behaviour patterns and goals
• Personas are a design and communication tool in
  Coopers Goal-Directed design methodology for
  high-tech products.

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What are scenarios?

• Scenarios describe approximately how the
  persona(s) might use the product were designing
• (i.e. the manual, user guide, template, online
  help or knowledge base).

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What does a persona look like?

• A typical persona consists of a 1-page sheet
  containing the personas
• Name
• Position
• Description
• Key goals
• Photo

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A good persona description captures

• Goals
• Attitudes
• Work or activity flow
• Environment
• Skill level
• Frustrations
• (specific to the product domain)

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Example

• Jay Adachi , Call Centre Agent
• Description
• Jay doesnt mind working under pressure, in fact
  he sees the large number of calls that come in
  every day to his desk at the call centre as an
  opportunity and a challenge.
• He get a buzz from being able to help people and
  is always quick to spot a chance to make a sale.
  The extra income that this earns him is put aside
  for a long-anticipated surfing trip to Hawaii.
• Jay quickly learnt to navigate the online
  knowledge base but it irritates him when he cant
  locate the information he needs quickly.
• Goals
• Help people
• Keep wait times short
• Up-sell services

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Why use personas?

• Personas help us
• Understand and clearly define the user
• Imagine a definite person as the user
• Determine what the product should do and how it
  should behave
• Communicate effectively with stakeholders, SMES
  and colleagues
• Keep everyone focused on the significant
  characteristics of the known user
• Validate and test our design Will Jay ever do
  this? Why would he want that?
• Move design decisions out of the realm of
  personal opinion
• Get people committed to the design
• Measure the designs effectiveness

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What problems does using personas
resolve?

• Using personas helps avoid
• The elastic user
• Self-referential design
• Speculation and opinion
• Edge cases

• Using personas based on user research
• Gives you credibility and authority
• End arguments
• Helps make better decisions
• Helps unify a project team
• Enables you to design effective products
• May lead to break-through design

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How do you create personas?

• Coopers Goal-Directed methodology provides a
  process for creating personas that is
• Based on qualitative user research
• Structured and rigorous
• Proven to work
• It's easy to assemble a set of user
  characteristics and call it a persona, but it's
  not so easy to create personas that are truly
  effective design and communication tools.

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Why qualitative research

• Tells you what, how and why
• Faster
• Cheaper
• More flexible
• More likely to answer the important questions

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How many personas do I need?

• This depends on the number of distinct different
  behaviour patterns and goals within the target
  audience.
• One persona may be enough
• Multiple personas may be needed to cover the
  range of behaviours
• May need to prioritise into primary and
  secondary personas

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How can you design for just one person?

• If you understand a single persons needs and
  goals very well, you satisfy other people who
  share these goals.
• ExampleWheel-on cabin bags weredesigned for
  flight attendants.
• Common goals were
• - Travel comfortably
• - Look professional
• - Be ready to go on arrival

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What personas are not

• Personas are sometimes confused with
• Statistical averagesThe range is more useful.
• Real peopleToo idiosyncratic - lose the
  archetypal nature.
• Target markets
• Market segments Groups of customers who
  respond to similar messages
• Personas Groups of users with similar goals
  and usage patterns
• Job descriptions or rolesDefine the tasks rather
  than goals and behaviours.
• One person may represent multiple roles/jobs and
  vice versa.

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When to create personas

• The time to create and prioritise personas is at
  the definition and design stage of a project.

Research business requirements
Model the users
Envision/design the solution
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Creating personas

• User research
• Make a persona hypothesis
• Identify critical characteristics
• Identify interviewees
• Conduct 3-4 user interviews per persona
  hypothesis

• Create personas
• Revisit critical characteristics
• Identify major patterns
• Rough out description and goals
• Check for completeness and for distinctness
• Expand and refine details
• Develop the narrative
• Designate persona types

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Using personas in scenarios

• A context scenario describes approximately how
  the persona(s) might use the product.
• The most important or frequent workflows are the
  key path scenarios that guide, inform and
  validate your product design.

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Whats in a scenario?

• A context scenario may include a description of
• What the persona needs to accomplish
• What the end result needs to be
• How the persona goes about it the main steps
• The setting
• The length of time the persona uses the
  product
• Interruptions
• Any other document or product used in
  conjunction with it
• How much complexity is permissible

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Recommended design practices

• Coopers have found the following practices
  efficient and effective
• No designing alone
• Design in small teams for efficiency (pairs)
• In design meetings, one person generates ideas,
  the other tests them to help them evolve
• If stuck
• Get another brain
• Pretend its magic or pretend its human

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Alan Cooper on online help

• The main purpose of online help is as a reference
  tool for intermediate users
• Enables perpetual intermediates to expand their
  horizons and find definitive answers
• The key to success is an effective index with
  many synonyms
• Online help should ignore beginners -The basic
  functioning of the software needs to be easy to
  figure out by experimentation
• Beginners need a guided tour, for example
• A dialogue box that communicates overview, scope
  and purpose
• About boxes
• Tool-tips
• A demonstration
• Offer shortcuts directly from the Help menu
• Source About Face The Essentials of User
  Interface Design by Alan Cooper

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Resources

• Web sites
• www.designit.co.nz
• www.cooper.com
• Books by Alan Cooper
• The Inmates are Running the AsylumWhy Hi-Tech
  Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore the
  Sanity
• About Face The Essentials of User Interface
  Design

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Thank you for your time.