personas - redesigning their content, rethinking their form
Post on 13-Jul-2015
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BEN CROTHERS • DESIGN MANAGER • @BENCROTHERS
Personas - redesigning their content, rethinking their form
Personas are like asparagus !
If you’ve only ever had the canned stuff, you’d think that’s what asparagus just is, and you’d think it is truly awful. You would avoid it, and tell everyone else to avoid it too. And rightly so.
Personas are like asparagus !
But if you’ve tried real asparagus—especially lightly sautéed with hoi sin sauce and sesame seeds—then you’d be a fan. So many of us have only ever known the canned asparagus version of personas, and either dismiss them or are outright against them.
Real personas are great !
But real personas—created from qualitative and quantitative research, goal-based and related to the jobs that people actually need to get done—are incredibly useful at various points along the journey of designing and building websites and products.
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
1983: Alan Cooper starts using them.
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
1993: The word spreads at conferences. Distinction is made between marketing personas and user experience personas.
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
1998: Alan Cooper publishes The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Personas go mainstream…
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Personas go boom in a big way! Everyone loves them, but starts to confuse marketing vs. UX personas, and a lot of people do them poorly. We start to smell snake oil… !
Jason Fried crashes the party, saying they’re artificial, abstract and fictitious. :(
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Personas go into free-fall!
Kim Goodwin publishes Designing for the Digital Age, re-clarifying marketing vs. UX personas…
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
…but EVERYONE is putting the boot in now, including San Saffer.
Jill Christ and Stephanie Carter talk about ‘BS personas’ and real personas
A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI InterCHI
?
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020Confusion reigns…?
What are personas, again…? !
Representations of distinct groups of users Informed by research Authentic sets of goals and expectations that drive their behaviours Guide decisions about functionality and design
We use personas at Atlassian !
They have lots of researchy goodness baked in They stop is designing for ourselves We used them everywhere…
But we had problems
We started playing favourites !
We got used to only using some and neglected the rest We were in danger of excluding significant use cases and behaviours
The personas had turned into just…artefacts !
They were up on the walls and in the toilets… But they faded into the background, and became wallpaper Us designers forgot that not everyone automatically knows how to use them
Their meaning was fading too !
Over time we habitually reduced our reference and understanding of the personas We ended up only using about 20% of what was in them
This persona should have had lots of detail…
Alana
Project Manager
Product Manager
CEOSystems
Administrator
…But just became a ‘bossy manager’ cliché
Alana
Project Manager
Product Manager
CEOSystems
Administrator
Insight !
Personas have to be relevant and useful How to use personas should be baked in Pay attention to the form, as well as content
So we
redesigned their content
rethought their formand
Our full-page personas now have more character and behaviours…
We made a big distinction between personas and roles…
Alana
Project Manager
Product Manager
CEOSystems
Administrator
We made a big distinction between personas and roles… !
We have 14 products and 40,000 customers, with a huge variety of roles Atlassians love card games, so we repackaged the persona and role content…
And created them as cards
Alana
Project manager
Product manager
CEOSystems
Administrator
Persona cards
Role cards
Role cards - What people do in a productEasy-to-scan front
Questions this role would ask
Personas most likely to do
this role
Persona cards - How they do it
Questions based on Alana’s
attitudes
Behaviours
Characteristic quote
We play them together
How might we improve charts in JIRA for Alana the Project Manager?
We play them together
Or how might we improve charts in JIRA for Will the Project Manager?
Keep them simple!
We thought it’d be awesome to have different skills, points, powers and upgrades! But no, if everyone were to use them, we had to keep them simple Maybe we’ll do skills and upgrades next time ;)
Persona sheets and cards - the system
Persona sheets and cards - the system
We read the full-page versions to keep a comprehensive sense of each persona We use the cards by ourselves or in teams It’s about triggering richer conversations
Application #1: ‘Pick > Reveal > Discuss’ game:A team looks at a scenario to design for Each team member goes through the role cards and picks out the one they think is most important in that scenario Everyone reveals the one they chose, and then discuss any differences
Application #2: Pitch and critiqueA designer presents their designs The rest of the group critique the designs by playing out the scenario with each role involved, and with whichever persona matches that role
Product manager, designer and developers map out a workflow, with all roles involved in the scenario They then add different personas to the roles, to see how that would affect the flow
Application #3: Workflow modelling
Your turn !
What would a mobile version of your personas look like? What could you bake in to make it more intuitive to use?
Go forth and make! (or print) !
Start with prototypes, make your own Get sets printed online for a slicker result (e.g. http://www.makeplayingcards.com/ )
Thank you
BEN CROTHERS • DESIGN MANAGER • @BENCROTHERS
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