Putting personas to work - University of Edinburgh Website Programme
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The document outlines the concept of personas in user experience design, detailing how they represent fictional users based on real data to enhance understanding of user behavior and needs. It emphasizes the importance of bringing personas to life through activities and stakeholder involvement, as well as the common reasons for persona project failures. The document also includes examples of various user personas and discusses methods for effectively utilizing them in web publishing and content management systems.
Putting personas to work - University of Edinburgh Website Programme
- 1. Putting personas to work How to ensure they live beyond the initial enthusiasm and interest Neil Allison University Website Programme Web Publishers Community, February 2014
- 2. Overview 1. What’s a persona? 2. Bringing personas to life: Activities, tips, experiences 3. Why persona projects fail Questions?
- 3. 1. What’s a persona? • Personas are essentially made-up people – Reflecting key traits and attitudes • They help personalise a large, diverse group • They’re typically based on: – Data generated by user research – Knowledge of a customer base or user group
- 4. Personas bring focus The User Is Always Right by Steve Mulder http://amzn.to/1ywMMOm
- 5. Personas build empathy The User Is Always Right by Steve Mulder http://amzn.to/1ywMMOm
- 6. Personas encourage consensus The User Is Always Right by Steve Mulder http://amzn.to/1ywMMOm
- 7. Personas bring efficiencies The User Is Always Right by Steve Mulder http://amzn.to/1ywMMOm
- 8. Summary: why use personas? • Better shared understanding of users’ behaviour, attitudes and needs • Better communication across development & support teams – “What would Olive use this feature for?” – “Would Terry understand this guidance?” • Building a shared vision of who we’re working for and why
- 9. Our experience • 2008 – Prospective student & parent investigation with SRA & International Office • 2009 – First version of Polopoly user personas • 2010 – Prospective PG online UX project • 2011 – PG project phase 2 with schools • 2013 – CMS user personas for Drupal project • 2013/4 – New arrival UG and prospective visiting students for Student Experience Project
- 10. CMS user personas How the University Website Programme represents you
- 11. Olive the occasional user • Wants to avoid web publishing tasks where possible. • No engagement with support and community; doesn’t see herself as a web-publisher. Feels the only help is her colleagues. • Reactive – only edits when unavoidable. • Little or no confidence in web publishing. • Just wants to dump content into CMS as initially drafted. Technical Time for publishing Frequent user of CMS Non-technical No time for publishing Infrequent user of CMS “It all seemed quite straightforward at the training session…” Basic edits to existing content Adding new pages with basic elements to existing structures TYPICAL TASKS Every time she needs to perform a task in the CMS, it feels like learning how to do it from scratch PAIN POINTS More colleagues publishing webpages, so more people to ask for help (or to pass the work on to!) BENEFIT OF CMS If at all!
- 12. Ed the everyday editor • Wants to complete publishing tasks as quickly and easily as possible • May engage with community events if prompted. Uses support wiki but prefers email or phone. • Mainly reactive – directed by others. • Confident with day-to-day web publishing activities. • CMS structure is good because it makes it harder to break things. Technical Time for publishing Frequent user of CMS Non-technical No time for publishing Infrequent user of CMS Creates and edits web-pages Simple reorganisation of subsections Takes on new features when prompted, but needs support to implement TYPICAL TASKS Needs basic editorial tasks to be quick and hassle-free Needs to consult support wiki for tasks he doesn’t do frequently PAIN POINTS Likes having a support service available; gives him more confidence in web publishing. Feels his web pages look professional. BENEFIT OF CMS “I just want to get the job done quickly”
- 13. Coleen the comms specialist • Wants to help her unit meet their goals by providing a professional and efficient suite of communication channels, which includes the website • Engages with web publishing community. Tries out new features independently • Proactive –Web is part of communications and improving it will support business. • Confidence in range of relevant CMS functionality. • Wants CMS to deliver more flexible webpage layouts Technical Time for publishing Frequent user of CMS Non-technical No time for publishing Infrequent user of CMS “The website needs to keep pace with the business & its users” Directly manages high profile content Manages site focus and structure Dictates who edits & publishes TYPICAL TASKS Pace of improvements to the system are slow Wants CMS to keep pace with trends in web comms and user behaviour PAIN POINTS Can do more advanced web publishing without technical input. Training and support means she’s more confident about the quality of her team’s work Can share and use others’ content BENEFIT OF CMS
- 14. Terry the tech specialist • Wants to try new things, innovate, collaborate. • Engages with the Technical Peer Group and Web Publishers Community when there are topics of interest. • Mainly proactive. Keeps abreast of technical trends and internal issues. • Confident in range of web technology. • Wants to modify the CMS to meet needs of his unit & to experiment. Technical Time for publishing Frequent user of CMS Non-technical No time for publishing Infrequent user of CMS “Central services hold back innovation & improve too slowly” One-off projects covering all areas of web-development and integration Emergency publishing Fixing others’ problems TYPICAL TASKS Feels restricted by corporate CMS Wants to be able to customise locally Wants more direct access to CMS PAIN POINTS Gets to spend less time doing basic web-publishing tasks BENEFIT OF CMS
- 15. Which persona are you? • Spend a moment to reflect… • Individual users are (almost) always represented by multiple personas – What percentage of each are you? – What aspects do you most associate with?
- 16. 2. Bringing personas to life Familiarisation exercises, Research, Reporting, Planning & prioritising
- 17. Stakeholder buy-in • Get stakeholders involved in creation • Limit the number of personas • Make them distinct and memorable • Allow time for familiarisation
- 18. Familiarisation exercises • A way to think about and discuss the personas • Does everyone feel the personas would react in the same way in a particular scenario?
- 19. How do we know we’re doing it properly? When you find yourself saying: – “I doubt Ed would ever want to do that” And no one asks: – “Who’s Ed?” We’re probably getting there
- 20. Behavioural matrices Low tech High tech Infrequent CMS use Frequent CMS use No CMS community engagement High community engagement Reactive content mgt Proactive content mgt • Map the four personas to each matrix • Compare locations with the group – Any significant differences of opinion?
- 21. New CMS service goals • B - Facilitate online business for all areas of the University • R - Be robust, resilient and scalable • I - Support flexible and innovative web development • D - A quality website user experience across multiple devices • G - Be governed and managed by a central service with inclusive, transparent processes • E - Quick and easy for all levels of CMS user • S - Support the generation of standards- and legislation-compliant websites Which goal is most important to each persona?
- 22. Amazon reviews • Choose one persona • Write a review for – Polopoly – The new CMS Wheelmate Laptop Steering Wheel Desk by Go Office Genuine product & reviews: bit.ly/amazon-wheelmate
- 23. Usability testing • Recruit participants to play role of personas or • Use persona to steer real user recruitment
- 24. Competitor analysis • Compare competitor provision with the objective yardstick of a persona
- 25. Expressing your findings • Map out persona experiences • Immediate and succinct way to report research findings uxmatters.com cxpartners.com
- 26. Scorecards for ongoing monitoring Sample scorecard from ‘Stop Redesigning And Start Tuning Your Site Instead’ by Lou Rosenfeld http://bit.ly/Hwjdoc Objectively and regularly measure
- 27. Tell a story • Easy to do with senior stakeholders • Easy to collaborate on • Storytelling is an ancient and universal activity
- 28. Persona-weighted feature prioritisation New students site content Persona 1 Persona 2 Persona 3 … Checklists Welcome guides Money & fees Etc… Step 1: Score the feature: • 2 – Persona will love this • 1 – Sure, it’s fine. Expected • 0 – Doesn’t affect the persona • -1 – Persona will hate this • Can be used for functionality, services and content • For existing stuff & potential new developments • Weight personas if some are more important than others Step 2: Editorial discussion: • What do we need to do to the feature to meet persona expectations? • Is this feature adding value?
- 29. Expressing different requirements The CMS… …provides functionality to create accessible web forms to collect data from visitors …can email collected form data …or stores & allows viewing of visitor entered data securely & in accordance with data protection legislation This is important to me because… Olive I want data to be collected and viewed easily so that our processes can be improved. I don’t want my site compromised. I want enough functionality to enable me to create forms for a variety of uses without the need for technical help. I don’t want to have to deal with spam data. Coleen Ed Terry I want data to be stored centrally so that I don’t need to build and maintain external systems.
- 30. Challenge new development ideas • We believe that – Creating this content • For – This persona • Will achieve – This outcome • We will know when we are successful – When we see...
- 31. 3. So why do personas fail? • Stakeholders don’t understand • Personas don’t feel real • Personas get avoided or forgotten
- 32. “Essence of a Successful Persona Project” Jared Spool found the most important aspects were: – Internalizing the personas – Creating rich scenarios – Prioritizing the most important personas – Involving all the stakeholders and influencers bit.ly/uie-successful-personas
- 33. The final resting place of many personas Flickr creative commons credits: Pindec Vegansoldier
- 35. Want to learn more? • See the wiki www.bit.ly/edinburgh-personas • Training session coming soon – interested?