Persona Design

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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 thats just one dimension

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One size doesnt (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 youre
  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 theyve 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 thats exactly what youll 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
• Doesnt know anyone else in Penrith yet
• Hasnt 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 cant be bothered
  setting it to record things

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Whats 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 youre 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.
• Its 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 its 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 peoples 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 youll 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 whats 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 theres someone who you know youre 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
its 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 youve selected a Persona
  stick to it, dont allow yourself to switch to a
  different one mid way through.

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Persona Design

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