Teaching Design with Personas

1
Teaching Design with Personas

• M. Cameron Jones
• Ingbert R. Floyd
• Michael B. Twidale
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2
Motivation

• To paraphrase a misconception
• Persona-based design allows you to design
  without users

3
What are we teaching?

• What are students taking away from discussions of
  design methods like personas?
• How do design methods fit into our teaching
  objectives?
• What do we want students to take away?
• Are we making connections effectively?
• Or, are they right and we wrong? Have we just had
  too much of the persona Kool-aid?

4
Design Spaces
Harrison, Back, Tatar, 2006
5
Design Spaces
Alexander, 1964
6
Why are they useful?

• Measurement Prediction

7
Mapping the design space
8
Design Process
Divergence
Transformation
Convergence
Jones, 1970
9
Bad Design

• Commit early to design decisions
• Reinforce early decisions

10
Personas

• Hypothetical archetypes of users
• Based on real-user data
• Not based directly on real people
• Not averages
• Plausible not necessarily accurate
• One of many user-centered design tools and methods

11

• Student comments on Personas

12
Personas are averages

• Just look at Chinese restaurants, for example.
  Fast food Chinese shops, like Panda Express,
  taste a lot different from something you'll find
  in Chinatown in Chicago. And the reason for this,
  I'm assuming, is that the restaurateurs know that
  Joe SixPack coming off I-57 is probably only
  interested in a certain level of authenticity
  when it comes to ethnic cuisine...and so he
  prepares the meals according to the averages.

13
Personas are THE design method

• My question is this...if you design to personas
  (not to real people), does that in any way remove
  the need of testing the product on real people?
  On the first page of the chapter, Cooper says
  to "never let the user directly affect the
  solution." I don't see how it is possible to
  design a product if the people who are supposed
  to actually use the end product have no way of
  testing it to see if it actually works.

14
Personas are user-less design

• Repeatedly while reading this article, I asked
  myself where the data for creating a persona was
  coming from - who's idea of the persona is being
  used?

15
Personas decide design decisions

• Using a persona based on ones idea of a precise
  user without current data reflecting a sample of
  real users, I think, can be limiting. For
  example, I think of a situation regarding office
  furniture design. Furniture designers have only
  just recently begun to design furniture,
  especially for executives, with a woman's
  proportions in mind.
• If a persona designed for believability, not
  diversity were used by designers in the above
  story would the issue of women's proportion to
  their office furniture still be an issue?

16
Why is there confusion?

• Many kinds of personas
• Cooper
• Norman
• Pruitt Grudin
• (see Floyd, Jones, Twidale currently in
  submission)
• Many uses of personas
• Summarize designer knowledge
• Discover design issues
• Communicate design rationale
• Make (or justify) design decisions
• (see Floyd, Jones, Twidale currently in
  submission)

17
Persona Kinds

• Effective personas
• Cooper
• Ad-Hoc
• Bad personas
• Promotional Personas
• Elastic Personas
• Twin Personas
• My Mother Personas

18
Promotional Personas

• The One Month Alarm Clock
• Lack empirical support
• Ignore evidence which counters design
• Rationalize design decisions already made

19
Elastic Personas

• Sophie lives in one of the big cities
• which city? which country?
• and owns a first or second house/apartment
• which, a house or an apartment? First or
  second?
• together with her partner.
• male or female partner?
• She surfs the Web on a broadband connection
• what websites?
• and both the computer and the Internet play a
  central role in her daily life.
• in what way?
• She plays a couple of games on the Internet every
  week
• what games? WoW? Bejeweled?
• if her busy schedule permits it.
• Why is her schedule so busy?

The Sophie persona comes from Goossens, 2006
20
Twin Personas
John John and his employees are always on the go.
They are traveling all the time trying to gain
and manage their clients. While the company is
getting better, they are in need of a software
package that allows them to keep track of their
contacts. Microsoft Dynamics is a good solution
to this problem but it cost too much for the
company. This growing company is in need of a
program that can manage their contacts but also
be at a reasonable price.
Paul Paul sells items online through Ebay.
Currently after selling items to a buyer, it is
hard to stay in contact with that particular
client. If Paul has five different former clients
who like a particular type of product, it becomes
a hassle in trying to contact these people to try
and sell them these items. Paul could buy A.C.T
to help him manage his clients but A.C.T is very
expensive and would severely cut into his
revenues.
21
Twin Personas

• Apparent differences and diversity
• Essential similarity w/r/t particular dimensions
  of the design space
• Can reflect design biases

22
My Mother Personas

• Directly based on a known individual
• Often based on elderly family members
• Problems
• Quirky, maybe too quirky
• Not completely defined in the persona text
• Do not motivate reflection and synthesis

23
Recommendations

• Do not over think personas
• Do not hesitate to get started
• Have students collect data
• Have students share their personas
• Have students create multiple personas
• Do not let personas languish
• Engage in longer-term design projects