UXPA 2023: F@#$ User Personas
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The document discusses the limitations and evolution of user personas in UX design, highlighting how many practitioners create ineffective personas based on misconceptions. It advocates for building a user insights hub that emphasizes research and user understanding over potentially misleading personas. Key takeaways focus on mature UX practices, identifying user attributes for decision-making, and emphasizing continuous database updates for better user experience design.
![“Personas are just one of the powerful design
tools I’ve invented over the years. I believe that
part of their appeal is how easy it is to do
‘personas’ without really doing personas. When a
well-intentioned practitioner would read a blog
and learn some bogus ‘persona’ method,
they’d soon fail. And reasonably, they
would blame personas.
Often, they’d realize what was wrong, and
recapitulate them under their own name. They’d
then write their own blog post saying, ‘[This
thing that isn’t personas that I’m going to
call personas] is really awful. But this
[personas under some new name] is much
better!’”
- Alan Cooper
Level Setting](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fuserpersonas-230711154658-009c3b1f/85/UXPA-2023-F-User-Personas-6-320.jpg)
UXPA 2023: F@#$ User Personas
- 1. FUCK User Personas A story of UX maturity
- 2. Tiffany Kieboom Lead, UX Research at Benevity
- 3. Greg Hallihan Principal Consultant at Human Insights
- 5. Level Setting Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. - Interaction Design Foundation
- 6. “Personas are just one of the powerful design tools I’ve invented over the years. I believe that part of their appeal is how easy it is to do ‘personas’ without really doing personas. When a well-intentioned practitioner would read a blog and learn some bogus ‘persona’ method, they’d soon fail. And reasonably, they would blame personas. Often, they’d realize what was wrong, and recapitulate them under their own name. They’d then write their own blog post saying, ‘[This thing that isn’t personas that I’m going to call personas] is really awful. But this [personas under some new name] is much better!’” - Alan Cooper Level Setting
- 7. International Segmentation Whoa! Too big. Just personas please. Mapping Information What do we already know? The Ask Do user personas, we don’t have any and we should. Project Progress
- 10. First Iteration Fuck personas, let’s do something else. International Segmentation Whoa! Too big. Just personas please. Building a User Insights Hub One thing led to another. Mapping Information What do we already know? The Ask Do user personas, we don’t have any and we should. Project Progress
- 12. That’s a lot of data! I’m lost.
- 14. Ellena - Benevity Designer THAT FRIGGIN DASHBOARD IS SO NICE TO USE!
- 15. Okay cool! But I’m still a bit intimidated by the data.
- 16. User Role Card Iterations Critical moment
- 18. Nice! I can use this.
- 19. Still a risk that they become outdated. Make a plan to update the data throughout your fiscal year.
- 20. First Iteration Fuck personas, let’s do something else. International Segmentation Whoa! Too big. Just personas please. Building a User Insights Hub One thing led to another. Mapping Information What do we already know? The Ask Do user personas, we don’t have any and we should. Project Progress Communicating to all Sharing this out to the whole product team
- 22. The Full Meal Deal
- 23. Patrick - Benevity Designer When I started at Benevity four years ago, I was desperate for this type of information. It took me years of digging and interviewing to figure out who I was truly designing for. I’m beyond excited that this work will accelerate every single person building our products. THANK YOU!
- 24. Shane - Benevity Design Manager It didn’t take long and I already had a victory using the User Insights Hub. Was in a meeting with a PM talking about Community Investment users and I was able to easily pull it up and grab super detailed information about a specific goal and tasks. This will save us a bunch of time and work. Thank you, thank you, thank you - all your hard work is already paying of and is greatly appreciated!
- 25. First Iteration Fuck personas, let’s do something else. International Segmentation Whoa! Too big. Just personas please. Building a User Insights Hub One thing led to another. Mapping Information What do we already know? The Ask Do user personas, we don’t have any and we should. Project Progress Where we are now Phase 2 Communicating to all Sharing this out to the whole product team
- 26. Phase 2 Primary research to fill gaps ● Primary research to fill in the gaps of what we know about our users. ○ Answer questions people have ○ Validate pain points and jobs to be done ○ Validate user sentiment for our product capabilities ● Plan strategy for maintaining the database and updating the user role cards
- 27. Times are Tough, but Value is Still There ● Lost research ops support ● New PMs, Designers, and contractors use it for onboarding ● Product team uses it when starting new initiatives and to make sure we aren’t duplicating work ● More and more people across the organization are using it ● It’s built into the tasks for each phase of our PDLC ● Language is changing - Persona User Role
- 28. What we Learned
- 29. Where they fall short: ● Often created with good intentions, but with poor execution. ● Can mislead people in thinking they know enough about the user, or they don’t need to test with users. ● Can cause people to have too narrow of a focus, and forget the rest of the target market or users. ● Are not helpful in making strategic decisions for your product or service. #1 Limitations of Personas
- 30. Best Practises for Research & Design: ● Learning about your target market, and what their tasks and goals are when they use your product or service. ● Recruitment - screener questions that help you target diverse users, and make sure you’re always looking for people you haven’t spoken to or tested with yet. ● Accessibility & inclusivity - building awareness in discovery, planning to do better when designing the solution, and building intentionally for all humans. ● Reduce cognitive load - everyone is busy. ● Use cases and scenarios that help you gain a different perspective. #2 What’s Better than Personas?
- 31. Research in a Product Development Lifecycle
- 32. Accessibility & Inclusivity in a Product Development Lifecycle
- 33. Do personas have any value? Sure, create them as needed if… ● You happen to be part of a team that struggles to empathize or have compassion for other people. ● You are focusing on some edge cases or unique scenarios, such as Anti-Personas, and need to imagine the user in the scenario. ● You use the persona template to create an “interview snapshot” after some research sessions, to help describe the participants. ● You recognize their limitations and prevent them from being used inappropriately.
- 34. Key Takeaways 1. UX has matured passed the point of simply building empathy, and needs to focus more on putting the empathy into practise in how we do our work. 2. Best practises in Research & Design are a better way to build great experiences. Start by learning about the people who use, or might use, your product or service. 3. Map out what you know about your users, and identify the attributes that will help make decisions. 4. Learn about how your team will use the information, and plan your communications. 5. Plan to maintain and update the database and any other artifacts you create.