person a design

Persona Design.1

Persona Design

Goal directed design using personas

Persona Design.2

Missing the Target

“Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work properly yet”

- Douglas Adams

Persona Design.3

What is Technology for?

To help people perform tasks?

Persona Design.4


To help people achieve goals?

Persona Design.5


To help people

Persona Design.6

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…

KidsTeensAdultsElders

Would you use the same tone, navigation, visual style? No! And that’s just one dimension…

Persona Design.7

One size doesn’t (often) fit all

Strategies for designing for peopleDesign a system that can be used by anyoneDesign 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

Persona Design.8

Personas

Persona Design.9

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 isAn archetype, a stereotypeA design targetSpecific (but not excessively so)

It is notPolitically correctA marketing demographicAn average

Persona Design.10

What is a Persona

A Persona includes information such as…

Personal profileage, sex, education, job, hobbies, family, socio-economic group, etc

Rolejob role for work-centred sitesposition 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

Persona Design.11

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!

Persona Design.12

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

Persona Design.13


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

Persona Design.14


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

Persona Design.15

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.

Persona Design.16

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

Persona Design.17


Goals

To not be lonely

Keep in touch with her sons and their families

Avoid frustrating technology experiences!

Not be reliant one anyone

Persona Design.18

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

Persona Design.19

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

Persona Design.20

Scenarios

Persona Design.21

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.

Persona Design.22

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 DirectedNo mention of the implementationA solution is being defined

Persona Design.23

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 DirectedThe implementation is impliedA solution has been defined

Persona Design.24

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”…

Persona Design.25

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.

Persona Design.26

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

Persona Design.27

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.

Persona Design.28

Creating Personas

Persona Design.29

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.

Persona Design.30

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?

Persona Design.31

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.

Persona Design.32

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.

Persona Design.33

Problems Personas help you avoid

Persona Design.34

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.

Persona Design.35

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.

Persona Design.36

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.

Persona Design.37

Persona Design

http://

person a design

Documents