Imran Hussain

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Virtual University Human-Computer Interaction
Lecture 22User Modeling

• Imran Hussain
• University of Management and Technology (UMT)

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In the Last Lecture

• Qualitative Research Techniques
• Conducting ethnographic field studies

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In Todays Lecture

• Personas
• Goals

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Modeling
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Why Model?

• Used extensively in design, development and
  sciences
• Represent complex structures and relationships
• Have to make sense of unstructured, raw data
• Good models
• Emphasize features of structures or relationships
  they represent
• De-emphasize less significant details
• Create models based on patterns in data
• E.g., physicists on the atom

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Research
Modeling

• Use ethnographic research techniques to obtain
  qualitative data
• user observation
• contextual interviews

Qualitative Data
Usage Patterns
Goals
Personas
Sets of observed behaviors that categorize modes
of use
Specific and general desired outcomes of using
the product
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Moving from Research to Modeling

• Need to synthesize patterns
• This leads to the systematic construction of
  patterns in interaction
• Matching
• Behaviors
• Mental models
• Goals of users
• Personas provide this formalization

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Personas
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Personas

• A precise descriptive model of the user
• What he wishes to accomplish? and why?
• A.k.a. user models
• Personas based on motivations and behaviors of
  real people
• Personas based on behavioral data gathered from
  actual users through ethnographic interviews
• When to create
• Discovered during Research phase
• Formalized during Modeling phase

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Strengths of Personas

• How do you successfully accommodate a variety of
  users?
• Do not design for everyone!
• Different needs (e.g., a car for everyones
  needs)
• Person A (Minivan)
• Person B (Pickup)
• Person C (Sports Car)
• Design for specific types of individuals with
  specific needs
• These users should represent a larger set of
  users

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Strengths of Personas
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Strengths of Personas

• Personas are a tool for
• Understanding user needs
• Differentiating between types of users
• Prioritizing users

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Strengths of Personas

• Determine what a product should do and how it
  should behave
• Communicate with stakeholders, developers and
  designers
• Common language for discussing design decisions
• Build consensus and commitment to design
• Common understanding through narrative structures
• Measure the designs effectiveness
• Can be tested on personas
• Contribute to other product-related efforts
• Sales, marketing planning, business strategies

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Personas and User-Centered Design

• Personas resolve 3 user-centered issues
• The elastic user
• Self-referential design
• Design edge cases

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The Elastic User

• The term user causes imprecision
• During design decisions user becomes elastic
• Accommodating, computer-literate
• Unsophisticated first-time user
• Persons not elastic and represent real user needs

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Self-referential Design

• Developers mental model, skills, goals,
  motivations projected onto product design
• Manifested by a cool product
• Not understood by users

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Design Edge Cases

• What could possibly happen, but probably never
  will
• Personas provide reality check

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Personas Based on Research

• Personas synthesized from data
• Primary source of data
• Ethnographic interviews, contextual inquiry
• Supplemental sources of data
• Interviews with users outside their use context
• Information about users supplied by stakeholders
  and SMEs
• Market research data (focus groups, surveys)
• Market segmentation models
• Data from literature reviews
• Every detail in personas should be traceable
• From user quotes, observed behaviors

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Personas Represented as Individuals

• Personas are user models represented as specific,
  individual humans
• Represented as specific individuals
• Not actual people, but synthesized
• Engage empathy of development team towards human
  target of design
• Allow designers and developers to role play in
  scenarios

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Personas Represent Classes of Users in Context

• Personas identify usage patterns
• Usage patterns are behavior patterns regarding
  the use of a particular product
• Patterns along with work/life-related roles
  define personas as user archetypes (archetype an
  original model or pattern of which all things of
  the same type are representations or copies)
• Personas a.k.a. composite user archetypes
• Composites assembled by clustering related usage
  patterns across individuals
• Personas and reuse
• Personas context-specific
• Cannot be reused across products
• Archetypes vs. stereotypes
• Stereotypes antithesis of personas
• Reflect biases of designer biases

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Personas Explore Ranges of Behavior

• Personas do not establish an average user
• Identifies different kinds of behavior in form of
  ranges
• Designers must collect a cast (collection) of
  personas associated with a product

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Personas have Motivations

• Humans have emotions
• Personas capture motivations in the form of goals
• Identify usage patterns
• Identify why behaviors exist

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Personas vs. User Roles

• A.k.a. role models
• User roles and user profiles
• both describe relationship of users to products
• User roles are
• an abstraction
• A defined relationship between class of users and
  their problems

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Problems with User Roles

• More difficult to identify relationships in the
  abstract
• Focus on tasks, neglect goals as organizing
  principle
• Cannot be used as a coherent tool for
  communication and development

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Personas vs. User Profiles

• User profile
• Usually a brief biographical sketch
• Name
• Demographic data
• Fictional paragraph
• Personas derived from ethnographic data

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Personas vs. Market Segments

• Market segments
• Based on demographics and distribution channels
• Personas
• User behavior and goals

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User Personas vs. Non-user Personas

• Product definition error is to target people who
  review, purchase or administer the product
• IT Managers better served if real end user
  served
• Cater for non-user personas where necessary
• Enterprise systems

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Goals
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Goals and Personas

• Personas contain sets of behaviors
• Goals drive behaviors
• Personas without goals
• Communication tool useful
• Design tool useless
• Goals should determine functions of product
• Function and Behavior of Product must address
  Goals via Tasks

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Goals Motivate Usage Patterns

• Goals motivate people to behave in a certain way
• Goals provide answer to
• Why personas use a product?
• How personas desire to use a product?
• Goals serve as shorthand (in designers mind) for
  complex behaviors

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Goals Must Be Inferred from Qualitative Data

• Cant ask a person what his goals are directly
• He cant articulate them
• He wont be accurate
• He wont be honest
• Goals constructed from
• Observed behaviors
• Answers to questions
• Non-verbal cues
• Clues from environment
• Goals expressed succinctly
• Each goal expressed as a single sentence

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Types of Goals

• User Goals
• Non-User Goals

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User Goals

• Life goals
• Experience Goals
• End Goals

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Life Goals

• Reflect personal aspirations of user
• Go beyond the context of product being designed
• Examples
• Be the best at what I do
• Get onto the fast track and win that big
  promotion
• Learn all there is to know about this field
• Be a paragon of ethics, modesty and trust
• Not directly related to design of interface
• Addressing life goals creates fanatically loyal
  users

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Experience Goals

• Product-related (general)
• How someone wants to feel when using a product
• People desire to be treated with dignity and
  respect and supported
• Examples
• Dont feel stupid
• Dont make mistakes
• Feel competent and confident
• Have fun

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End Goals

• Product-related (specific)
• Expectations of the tangible outcomes of using a
  product
• Examples
• Find the best price
• Finalize the press release
• Process the customers order
• Create a numerical model of the business

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Combining End Goals and Experience Goals

• End goals have more appeal to
• Business people
• Programmers
• Most products satisfy end goals and not the
  experience goals
• Satisfying only end goals ? users not happy
• Satisfying only experience goals ? product
  becomes a toy

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Non-User Goals

• Must be considered, but not at expense of user
  goals
• Types
• Customer Goals
• Corporate Goals
• Technical Goals

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Customer Goals

• Consumer products
• Concerned about happiness and safety (parents,
  relatives, friends)
• Enterprise products
• Concerned about security, ease of maintenance,
  ease of customization (IT managers)

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Corporate Goals

• Businesses and organizations have goals for
  product
• Enable designers to remain focused
• Examples
• Increase profit
• Increase market share
• Defeat the competition
• Use resources more efficiently
• Offer more products or services

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Technical Goals

• Programmers goals
• Ease task of software creation
• Often take precedence over users goals
• Examples
• Save memory
• Run in a browser
• Safeguard data integrity
• Increase program execution efficiency
• Use cool technology or features
• Maintain consistency across platforms
• Users do not care about technical goals (e.g.,
  type of databases used)

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Successful Products Meet User Goals First

• Good products
• Serve a purpose in a context for people
• Key tool in designing is personas
• Personas are specific people working towards
  specific purposes (goals)
• Goals of real people using product are always
  more important than
• A corporation
• IT manager
• Users will try to meet business goals
• But not at expense of their dignity

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Meeting user goals

• Successful products meet user goals
• Dont make me (user) think
• i.e. dont make em feel stupid

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A users most important goal is always to retain
his human dignity(Dont make the user feel
stupid)Todays digital products degrade human
beings
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Constructing Personas
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Constructing Personas

• Personas derived from patterns observed during
  interviews and observations
• Well-developed personas include information about
• Goals
• Attitudes
• Work or activity flow
• Typical workday
• Use environment
• Skills and skill levels
• Current solutions and frustrations
• Relevant relationships with others

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Process for Constructing Personas

1. Revisit the persona hypothesis.
2. Map interview subjects to behavioral variables.
3. Identify significant behavior patterns.
4. Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals.
5. Check for completeness.
6. Develop narratives.
7. Designate persona types.

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Revisit the persona hypothesis

• Compare patterns in data with assumptions in
  persona hypothesis
• List behavioral variables
• Behavioral variables in enterprise applications
  related to job roles
• 15 to 30 behavioral variables per role
• Modify assumptions if at variance with data

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Map interview subjects to behavioral variables

• Map each interviewee against each applicable
  variable range
• Place interviewee on a range according to a scale
• Clusters indicate behavior patterns
• Behavioral range a.k.a. behavioral axis

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Map interview subjects to behavioral variables
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Identify significant behavior patterns

• Note clusters of subjects across multiple ranges
• Set of interviewees that cluster in 6-8 variables
  possibly represent a persona based on pattern
• May have 2-3 such patterns

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Synthesize relevant characteristics and relevant
goals

• Synthesize details from data
• List characteristics of behavior in brief bullet
  points
• Add little description of personalities
• Only first and last names of persona should be
  fictional
• Add some demographic info
• E.g., age, location, income
• From this point on, refer to persona by assigned
  name
• List goals by inference from behavior data

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Check for completeness

• Check persona characteristics and goals for any
  gaps
• Eliminate redundancies
• E.g., 2 personas only varying in location
• Each persona must vary from another in at least
  one behavior

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Constructing Personas

• Well-developed personas include information about
• Goals
• Attitudes
• Work or activity flow
• Typical workday
• Use environment
• Skills and skill levels
• Current solutions and frustrations
• Relevant relationships with others

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Develop narratives

• Introduce third person narrative to convey
  personas attitudes, needs and problems
• Persona narrative lt 1-2 pages
• Narrative
• Introduces persona in terms of job or lifestyle
• Sketches a day in his life, including interests
  and concerns related to product
• Choose photographs of persona

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Designate persona types

• Each interface designed for single, primary
  persona
• Prioritize personas

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Persona types

• Primary
• Primary target for design of interface
• Secondary
• Secondary personas per interface 0 to 2
• Supplemental
• Customer
• Served
• Negative

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Process for Constructing Personas

1. Revisit the persona hypothesis.
2. Map interview subjects to behavioral variables.
3. Identify significant behavior patterns.
4. Synthesize characteristics and relevant goals.
5. Check for completeness.
6. Develop narratives.
7. Designate persona types.