Personas and Scenarios

1
PERSONAS
2
User Personas

• Build a profile of a user with enough richness
  for a designer to get into their shoes
• Who
• Age, gender, education, experience (internet and
  computer), occupation, language and
  nationality(?)
• Context
• When, where (work, home, other), computer (speed,
  browser, monitor, etc.), connection (ISP, modem,
  etc.)

3
User Personas

• What
• Purpose, expectations
• Motivation
• Attitude, response to pressure
• Robustness
• Timid/aggressive, bold/safe, error phobic/error
  tolerant
• Name and possible nickname
• Other

4
Creating User Personas

• Generate a handful of descriptions of users that
  may use your product including specific purpose,
  needs, and desires
• Focus on real people interacting with your
  product
• Motivated to do real specific tasks
• What they do
• What difficulties do they run into
• How they react
• What their experience is with your product

5
Sources of Information for User Personas

• Observational studies
• User studies
• Log analysis
• Online survey data
• Internal marketing research
• Sales data
• Free web demographics data

6
Exercise 1 create personas

• In the previous class, your groups selected a
  project and determined stakeholders
• Today each group member should develop 2 personas
  (ensure that all stakeholders are represented
  among the personas chosen)

7
Using User/Customer Personas and Task Scenarios

• Usage
• Match specific tasks with the individuals
• Use in both design and evaluation
• In design, used as a target and communication
  tool
• In evaluation, the tasks are used to illuminate
  the expected experience
• Repeat the task, approaching it as if you were
  one of the other personas

8
Example Personas from an intranet study

• Bonita
• 28 yr old assembly line operator for a major
  corporation
• High school, Jr. college and OJT
• No home computer and uses a shared computer at
  work
• Martha
• 32 yr old new manager
• Has 10 people working for her
• Has a BS in Mechanical Engineering

9

• Al
• 45 yr old long time employee
• Currently working as a trade show / demo
  coordinator
• Thinking of learning new skills and changing jobs
• George
• 23 yr. Old fresh out of college with a BA in
  economics
• Works as a customer support person

10
Task Lists

• What are the top 10 uses of your
  project/interface?
• Let the user be your guide for starting the list
• For each stakeholder, determine which tasks they
  carry out

11
Task Scenarios

• Ask the reporters questions
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why

12
What Is a Task Scenario?

• Example for a customer support page for a
  computer retailer
• Who it is
• A 20 year old college student
• What they want to do
• Find out how to fix her HP printer that wont
  print
• When they want to do it
• At 11pm at night
• Where they are
• In a dorm room using her laptop
• Why they want to do it
• For a term paper due tomorrow

13
Task Scenarios

• Write it down
• Review the task scenario get groups acceptance
  that the tasks makes sense
• Need a variety of tasks to inform the design
• See how the task works with the design you are
  thinking about

14
Types of Tasks Critical Tasks

• New concepts or features
• E.g., new search capabilities
• New mechanisms for users
• E.g., drop down lists, roll-overs
• Critical features to success of interface
• E.g., ordering or communication

15
Task Scenarios Type of Tasks

• Navigational/informational tasks
• Find out more detail about Acme product
• Search tasks
• Can I find out about a product from this
  country?
• Transactional tasks
• How do you buy the product?
• When will you receive your order?
• Register for the class.
• Communication tasks
• How do I change my order?
• When will my vendor be shipping?

16
Task Scenarios

• Leveraging Scenarios
• Allow for encapsulation of customer use in real
  terms
• Context and benchmark for design
• Appropriate for participatory design
• Present and contrast alternative design methods
• Exploration of new concepts and future products
• Task sets for user testing
• More compelling to design partners

17
Match the Scenarios and Personas
18
User Interaction Scenario

• A story about people and their activities
• Also called Activity Design Scenario
• Example
• An accountant wishes to open a folder displayed
  on his screen in order to open and read a memo.
  However, the folder is covered by a budget
  spreadsheet that he also needs to see while
  reading the memo. The spreadsheet is so large
  that it nearly fills the display. The accountant
  pauses for several seconds, then resizes the
  spreadsheet, moves it partially out of the
  display, opens the folder, opens the memo,
  resizes and repositions the memo, and continues
  working.