Product development for B2B web applications: Using ad-hoc personas to

design a data product

Toby White, CTO, Timetric

Toughbyte after-work at LocalBitcoins: 2016-08-11

B2B App Development➔ You don’t need high numbers of users to make money

◆ You are not likely to have loads of users (at least initially) so you won’t have lots of usage data (and

thus fewer insights about how people use / would like to use your app)

➔ If it’s valuable enough to pay for, your app is core to your users’ business

◆ They are not going to want you to bugger around with it too much (A/B testing is right out; so is

trying to make constant minor tweaks and observe their effect.)

➔ Your app has value because your users’ time is valuable, and you’re helping them

make more effective use of it.

◆ They are (mostly) not going to want to spend their time having nice open-ended conversations

about how you could improve your app.

B2B App Development: no data● Little or no usage data;

● Little or no useful feedback on changes;

● Little or no chance to get even anecdotal feedback.

But product & UX development needs to be driven by data to be any good.

● Which page design is better? Try it out.

● How do people react to this page? Watch them.

● Which feature should we prioritize? Watch how people currently use the app, or

ask them.

What can we do if this isn’t possible?

Personas“The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them.”

https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

“[...] persona work yields a much deeper understanding of why customers do the things they do and what they expect from an organization within any given context. This knowledge about customers' motivations (the why) makes it possible to create innovative solutions, products, ad campaigns, and customer support (the what) that cater to customers on a personal level.”

http://uxmag.com/articles/personas-the-foundation-of-a-great-user-experience

What can personas do?● Business Goals

what does success look like?

● Brand Goals

How do we want our customers to perceive our brand?

● User Experience Goals ✓

What problems do we want to solve for our customers? – expressed in their terms

● Key Differentiators ✓

What can we offer our customers that no one else can?

● Value Propositions ✓

Why should our customers care?

6

Like it or not, we already have personas

7

Even without data, this picture is better

Ad-hoc personasBut what if you’ve got no data?

- “Ad-hoc personas trade traditional data collection for in-house knowledge”.

http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/personas_empath.html

https://aycl.uie.com/virtual_seminars/the_power_of_ad_hoc_personas

and see also “proto-personas”, eg http://uxmag.com/articles/using-proto-personas-for-executive-alignment

Originally a way to provide UX a voice at the table:

“Guide your execs away from traditional market segments, instead grouping the users

by their needs”. (ie, how do you let the PHBs feel like they’ve have their say!)

In other words - generate personas by incorporating intuition instead of data!

Ad-hoc persona methodology (30 sec overview)As a group:

1. Collectively identify usecases (and corresponding job-roles)

2. Cluster related use-cases together into groups

3. Look for patterns in the groups of use-cases

4. Call each pattern a persona, and give it a name, a likely role, a biography ...

1. 2.

3. 4.

Timetric/GlobalData “Intelligence Centers” are:

- Web-based portals for industry intelligence; news, deals, company information,

market sizing databases, macroeconomic data & forecasts, project trackers,

regulatory information, you name it …

- Used for strategic market insight, market development,

business development planning, …

- Used by marketing managers, CEOs, research analysts,

sales managers, strategic consultants, …

Personas for a data product

www.construction-ic.com

www.wealthinsight.com

… repeat for lots more sectors,

particularly across FS, Healthcare,

Consumer, Tech, Infrastructure.

Persona-building process1. Group of ~20 people from across the whole company.

- As many products & internal roles as we could cover: basically, anyone we could drag into one room at the same time

Generate ~200 individual usecases, grouped into ~30 needs/wants

Time: 2 hrs meeting (x20 people), + a few days preparation/summarization.

2. Group of 4 people.

- process leader, product manager, software head, CTO

Take ~30 needs/wants, find patterns representing 8 emergent personas

Time: 2 hrs meeting (x4 people) + a day prep/summarization

3. Same group of 4 people.

Review and prioritize personas.

Time: 2 hrs meeting (x4 people) + a day prep/summarization

Ad-hoc persona process results8 established and prioritized personas, each with a list of required tasks

1. Fred Functional Manager

2. Prunella Progressive Researcher

3. Iain Integrator

4. …

This allows us to prioritize feature requests according to the weighted average of

persona priorities that will feel the benefit.

i.e. it tells us what we should spend our effort building (and what we should not bother

with!)

Process OutcomeIt has also lets us better focus our:

● Marketing collateral

● Sales pitches

● And product design

And this has resulted in

★ Increased product usage

★ Strongly positive anecdotal feedback

★ Higher renewal rates

★ Higher revenue

New product designs are being directly led

by

➔ tasks the user needs to accomplish

➔ prioritized by importance

CreditsAlan Ayoub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanayoub

- Suggested the Ad-hoc personas approach & led the persona-development process

- Provided some of these slides

Emily Taylor: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/emily-taylor-a197774b

- Drove much of the task-focussed product redesign

Thanks!Questions? Rebuttals? Rotten tomatoes?

Ask me now, ask me over beer later, or connect with me:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobyohwhite

http://blog.datamediate.com/

@tow21

toby@timetric.com