Transcript Persona Design - Surface Effect

Persona Design
Goal directed design using
personas
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Missing the Target
“Technology is the name we give to
stuff that doesn't work properly yet”
- Douglas Adams
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What is Technology for?
To help people perform tasks?
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What is Technology for?
To help people achieve goals?
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What is Technology for?
To help people
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Who is Technology for?
One of the most important questions for any
project is “who is this device for?”
For example, how do you present information on a
website to…
Kids
Teens
Adults
Elders
Would you use the same tone, navigation, visual
style? No! And that’s just one dimension…
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One size doesn’t (often) fit all
Strategies for designing for people
Design a system that can be used by anyone
Design specialised systems for each type of audience
When to design “one size fits all”
Public access terminals - e.g. train ticket machines
Even then it pays to understand who you’re
designing for and to design for the most
challenging case
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Personas
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What is a Persona
A Persona is a description of a character that the
site will be designed for. Acts as a focus for design
It is
An archetype, a stereotype
A design target
Specific (but not excessively so)
It is not
Politically correct
A marketing demographic
An average
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What is a Persona
A Persona includes information such as…
Personal profile
age, sex, education, job, hobbies, family, socio-economic group,
etc
Role
job role for work-centred sites
position in household for home-centred sites (eg mother)
“Flavouring”
back-story, what sort of house they live in, how long they’ve
had their job, where their parents live, when they got married,
where they went on their honeymoon, etc
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Should be recognisable
A good persona generally gets…
“oh, I know someone just like that”
The designer should feel they know them well
enough that they can answer questions about them
Once into design that’s exactly what you’ll be
doing! You need to know them well enough to get
into character - rather like method acting!
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An Example: Marjorie Bannet
Biography
78 years old
Just moved to Penrith from Windermere
Has a son in Hastings, and a daughter in
Newcastle
Doesn’t know anyone else in Penrith yet
Hasn’t been driving for a few years now
Sometimes feels lonely
Has a help come in once a week
Would like to be able to read more
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An Example: Marjorie Bannet
Health
Has trouble sleeping from time to time.
Will wake up in the early hours and often
not get to sleep again for 2-3 hours
A little arthritis in her hands
Early cataracts, so less acute vision
Can move about, perhaps not quite as
quickly as she could 10 years ago
Sometimes has a rest in the afternoon
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An Example: Marjorie Bannet
Technology
Has never used a computer before, and
is a little nervous about them
Has a mobile phone, and instructions on
how to use it from her son
Uses the microwave to prepare many of
her meals
Uses a video recorder, but can’t be
bothered setting it to record things
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What’s the right level of detail?
A persona should be rich enough that they are a
believable person. The designer must be able to
feel empathy for the persona for them to be
effective.
They should be ‘normal’ people, not laden down
with quirks, although they should have typical
preferences.
Demographics are important, but you also need a
few personal titbits. These help you see a person not just a statistic, and develop empathy.
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A Persona has Goals
A persona has goals they want to achieve, not
tasks they wish to perform
Tasks pre-suppose a solution, goals are invariant
The goals should be mostly relevant to the device
being designed, although some may be more
general and include lifestyle goals
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An Example: Marjorie Bannet
Goals
To not be lonely
Keep in touch with her sons and their
families
Avoid frustrating technology experiences!
Not be reliant one anyone
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How do Personas help?
A persona acts as a focus for the design
As design options are created each one can be very rapidly
tested by asking “would Marge understand this?”
The personas goals direct the design towards an solution
which genuinely solves the correct problem
The next step is creating design, starting with Scenarios
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Different types of Personas
There are several types of personas
Primary - this is the person you’re mostly designing for.
If you only have one persona they will be primary
Secondary - not the main target, but they should be
satisfied if it can be done without upsetting the
primary
Negative - this is someone who are explicitly NOT
designing for - useful to avoid “but what about Fred
the freak who wants…” arguments
Bit Part - not always a full persona, but someone who
interacts with a persona in a significant way
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Scenarios
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Scenarios in Design
A scenario is a walk through a design, from the
point of view of a specific persona.
They can be done at various levels of detail.
Initially a scenario will be very vague, but as the
design is filled in and refined it will become more
and more specific.
It’s important that vague scenarios be completed
before detail is added, since this forces Breadth
First design.
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High Level Scenario
Marjorie is lonely, and would like to have a chat
with someone.
She finds out (or knows) who is about that she can
chat with
She invites Robert round for a chat, and banishes
the loneliness.
Goal Directed
No mention of the implementation
A solution is being defined
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Medium Level Scenario
Marjorie is lonely…
She looks at her device, and it shows her who is
online. She sees that Robert is available, so she
invites him for an online chat.
Robert accepts her invitation, and they start
chatting.
Still Goal Directed
The implementation is implied
A solution has been defined
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Low Level Scenario
Marjorie is lonely…
She looks at her tablet PC, which is switched on
and sitting on her coffee table, and she can see in
the address book that Robert, one of her contacts,
is online, and has set his status message as “Want
to chat?”.
Marjorie select Robert, and then selects the chat
program, and taps the start button. She then
writes a short invitation to Robert “Hello Robert”…
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Compared to HTAs
HTAs are an analysis of a task that already exists.
They include multiple levels of detail.
Scenarios start with almost no detail.
The scenario suggests new details that need to be
filled in, which provides a design problem to be
solved.
The design solution then feeds into the next
iteration of the scenario. At each level multiple
solutions can be tested.
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Testing Design Solutions
As the scenario and design evolve together
Personas can be walked through the emerging
design.
Would the persona understand the design?
Does the design help the persona achieve their goals?
Are there parts of the design (excise) which are not
moving the persona towards their goals which might
be removed?
These questions should be answered by the
designer, based on their empathy with the persona
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Secondary Personas
Secondary Personas will have their own scenarios,
for those extra requirements they have.
They should be able to achieve their goals without
distorting the design for the Primary.
If it’s not possible to accommodate both the
Primary and the Secondaries reasonably, then a
better option might be a second design.
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Creating
Personas
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How to create a Persona
Personas should be created by the designers who
will ultimately use them.
The designer should interview, target users of the
system to be designed.
If designing a movie database (as we are going to)
then attitudes to movies should be examined.
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Movie database user Persona
What are people’s goals when looking for movie
information? Why are people interested in movie
information?
What sorts of information are important to achieve
those goals?
When are you interested in getting movie
information?
Do you do this on your own, or with others?
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Collating into Personas
After interviewing a number of people you’ll spot
similar ideas coming up repeatedly.
You should start to identify a few different types of
people.
e.g. With movies, some people might just turn up
at the cinema and see what’s on. Others might see
a movie and plan to go to it when it comes out.
Each of these different types is probably a separate
persona.
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Design for a single Persona
Now you need to pick a Primary Persona.
Just One!
You might also want to pick a couple of secondary
personas (but not too many)
If there’s someone who you know you’re not
interested in supporting, they are a negative
persona.
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Problems Personas
help you avoid
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The elastic user
Without personas talk tends to drift towards the
“user”.
Then you get questions like
“what if the user wanted to do …”
If several people are asking these questions they
are probably all imagining different users.
The resulting design would be a hotchpotch, and
probably not make much sense to anyone.
Personas ensure everyone is aiming at the same
user.
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Self-Referential Design
Designers know what they like.
Left unchecked it’s very easy to end up designing
for yourself.
Designers are not representative of the intended
audience however. Engineers even more so!
By constantly referring back to Personas designers
can ensure that they are not just designing
something they like.
Graphic/Visual design also suffers from this
problem.
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Design for one, works for many
Because personas are archetypes there are many
people out there who will be close enough to a
Persona that they will be happy with the design.
Surprisingly designs generated using a Persona
methodology often have wider appeal that designs
which try to cater to all.
So keep focussed. Once you’ve selected a Persona
stick to it, don’t allow yourself to switch to a
different one mid way through.
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Persona Design
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