University of Washington HCDE 518 & INDE 545 Personas HCDE 518 & INDE 545 Winter 2012 With credit to Jake Wobbrock, Dave Hendry, Andy Ko, Jennifer Turns,

University of Washington HCDE 518 & INDE 545

Personas

HCDE 518 & INDE 545Winter 2012

With credit to Jake Wobbrock, Dave Hendry, Andy Ko, Jennifer Turns, & Mark Zachry


Agenda Announcements/

Questions Lecture & Discussion –

Contextual Inquiry Break – 5 mins Lecture & Discussion –

Personas Next class


Contextual Inquiry (cont.)


Principles of Contextual Inquiry Context

Must be done in the setting of the participant Partnership

Master/apprentice model; investigator is humble Interpretation

Observed facts must be regarded for their design implications. Raw facts without interpretation aren't very useful

Focus Themes that emerge during the inquiry. You can't pay attention to all

facets of someone's work at all times!


Master/Apprentice You are the apprentice The informant is your master What does this relationship

imply? Keen observation Unafraid to ask questions Eager to learn Admire the master Aspire to see the world as they do

Adopting the master/apprentice model during your CI will mean you don't have to pre-prepare a set of interview questions Reduces pressure to “get it right.”


Interviewing in CI

Go for concrete details obtained in-context, not abstract generalities Don't ask participants to summarize their work Ask them specific details about real, concrete, observable

things Have them “think aloud” as they work through their

tasks Pepper them with short, easily answerable questions Avoid high-level philosophical questions that will just cause

them to “talk” instead of “do”


Interpretation Checking

It is good to regularly check your interpretations “I saw you just do X. Is that because of Y?” “I believe X. Is that correct?” “If you had a technology that did X, would that solve the

problem we just encountered?” As long as you check your interpretations in context,

participants will respond accurately Outside of context, they may be more inclined to agree or

answer in generalities rather than specifics


Ways to Mess Up a CI Not being inquisitive/nosy enough

If you have the impulse to ask, do it right away! Overly disrupting the task

Questions are great, but don’t ask so many so fast that the participant stops doing their tasks.

Turning it into a regular interview If you could have done it in a coffee shop, you didn’t do a contextual inquiry.

Failing to be discrete Participants must feel safe, free, and anonymous.

Failing to respect your participants Failing to observe closely and take good notes Over-focusing on the wrong details Slipping into abstraction

Keep it concrete, in the work, in the details.


Siri’s Questions on CI & Ethnography

https://catalyst.uw.edu/gopost/conversation/jkientz/599293


personas


PersonasScenarios & Storyboards


What is a persona?

A persona is a archetypal character that is meant to represent a group of users in a role who share common goals, attitudes and behaviors when interacting with a particular product or service


User Goals Personas should each have three to four goals

(1) Life goals, which are personal aspirations e.g., wanting to retire before the age of 50

(2) Experience goals describe how the user wants to feel while interacting with a product; they are personal and universal e.g., wanting to be competent while using the product

(3) End goals, which are tangible outcomes the user has in mind when using the product e.g., want to be updated about finances over last month

Typically experience/end goals are more helpful to designers


Purpose Empathy

We are engaged by fictional characters all the time in movies and books.

Focus Constraints on the user population so that a design team can

focus on a specific subset of users in specific situations while interacting with the to-be-designed product

Emancipates designers from problems that might arise when considering a full spectrum of users

Concentrate on the highest priority set of user goals and needs. Communication

Conduits for conveying a broad range of quantitative and qualitative data

Assumptions about users made explicit


Avoiding Stereotypes

In the void of user research, designers have only their assumptions and intuitions guide their work

“the whole point in creating personas is to get past our personal opinions and presuppositions.” Goodwin, 2002

Thus, make sure your personas to do not fall into your stereotypes of people in your target user groups!


Personas vs. Roles

Personas do not necessarily equal roles e.g., parent, doctor, programmer, actor, etc.

People within the same roles can have very different needs and goals e.g., new programmer vs. experience programmer e.g., parent of 1 vs. parent of 8 e.g., oncologist vs. podiatrist


Persona Types Primary – Chunks greater than ~30% Secondary – Chunks between ~5-30% Supplemental – Chunks less than ~5% Customer – Buying technology, but not user

e.g., parent buying toy for toddler Served – Indirect stakeholders

e.g., patients of an electronic medical record Negative – Who you're NOT designing for

e.g., novices, older people, kids, etc.

Make sure you specify the type on your personas!


Three Basic Steps to Creating Personas

1) Collect data about users 2) Segment the users 3) Create personas


Example

Designing an interactive, mobile directory for people in Kyrgyzstan. Research by Cynthia Putnam (HCDE PhD Alum)


Personas need to be created using data from real users Can be qualitative or quantitative, but usually both

helps Qualitative helps get rich picture of ideas and people Quantitative from a large sample ensures that your

personas are representative of target users

Step 1: Collect Data


Step 1: Collect Data – Example Putnam used a combination of pre-existing

data types for Krgyz Personas Large scale survey Design Ethnography

Created with a proposed product in mind Mobile social software (MoSoSo) directory

Goal: provide accessible, reliable, and free information about phone numbers using social networks

E.g., Angie's List, Amazon buying recommendations


Step 2: Segment the Users

Can use affinity diagramming to help sort through qualitative data

Use surveys to look for major groupings, especially based on user goals for technology or major motivations


Step 2: Segment the Users - Example• 460 respondents owned used and owned mobile

phones• “What was your motivation to acquire your

phone?”• Three logical groupings

– (1) Replacement for home phone motivations (13%); – (2) Practical motivations (55%)

• Desire to make outgoing calls and pricing motivations– (3) Social motivations (32%)

• Desire to receive incoming calls and a need for a mobile phone because friends had them.


Attitudes

People who do not use mobile

phones are missing out on

things

Mobile phones are mostly a

form of entertainment*

Mobile phones represent a

threat to local culture and ways

Mobile phones are confusing

and hard to use

Mobile phone access is too expensive**

Mobile phones enable me to

access relevant information*

Mobile phone use is

monitored*

People have too use Russian too often when they

use a moble phone**

It is difficult to use mobile

phones if you don’t know English ***

Mobile phones are importanto

my future career

Replacement 65% 42% 32% 21% 64% 93% 44% 69% 70% 77%

Practical/Price 62% 29% 21% 19% 66% 82% 61% 65% 45% 82%

Social 53% 35% 21% 18% 51% 79% 45% 50% 32% 83%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Step 3: Create the Persona

Photo Name – first name starts with the first letter of the segmentation

(e.g., Shirin Social, Rosa Replacement) Quote that describes the user goals with the product Goals - a priority rating and specific objectives are also suggested Biographical profile and personal information that affects usage Computer, internet and other technology usage are common

components Key Point: Back up persona with data whenever possible!


Presentation Types Paper-based or digital mediums (most common)

Single Page Information Sheets Handouts Posters

Other types Beer glasses Action figures Key chains Facebook profiles


Step 3: Create the Persona

Parxat: Practical user Shirin: Social user Roza: Replacement user

Download Personas: http://courses.washington.edu/hcde518/project/personas/





P1 – Personas

You will create at least 3 personas for your potential users of your proposed system

Make sure personas are based on your user research and convey user's goals

Specify whether persona is primary, secondary, supplementary, etc.


Persona Templates

Download pre-made templates for formatting personas: http://zakiwarfel.com/archives/persona-

templates/ http://graffletopia.com/stencils/460 http://courses.washington.edu/hcde518/project/

PersonaSample.docx


Design Exercise: Persona Creation

System Goal – How can an interactive system to facilitate live musical performances?

Who might the different personas be? Primary, Secondary, Supplemental, Customer,

Served, Negative What are the goals of each persona?


Patrick’s Discussion Questions

What is the danger/benefit of using a stereotype vice persona to develop design ideas?

What is the difference between a ‘Provisional Persona’ and a stereotype?

How would you go about developing meaningful personas for products to be used by an entire population? (i.e. a chair)


Patrick’s Discussion Questions

User cannot tell the designer his goals. It is the designer who must reconstruct them from detailed observation. What are the consequences of misinterpretation of perceived user’s goals?

What could happen if you only designed for Reflective processing as described in Cooper et al personas reading?


Next Class Topics

Wednesday, February 1st Scenarios & Storyboarding

Monday, February 6th Ideation

Discussant - Jeena

Upcoming Work P1, R5


Group Project time

Documents

University of Washington HCDE 518 & INDE 545 Personas HCDE 518 & INDE 545 Winter 2012 With credit to Jake Wobbrock, Dave Hendry, Andy Ko, Jennifer Turns,