An introduction to personas and how(Second)

Conduct interviews in the user’s environment
Stay away from asking opinions about the design of the intranet or website, or asking users what they want. Rather gather information about the areas listed in the table on the next page. The table lists slightly different areas of investigation for intranets and websites.
Prepare a list of interview questions, however, remain open to an alternative path of questioning if it leads to uncovering user attitudes and behaviours. Also, don‘t ask questions like ‘What are your goals when using the intranet / website?’. You will need to infer the goals from questions like ‘What things frustrate you the most?’, ‘What makes a good working day?’, and ‘What will help you to do your job better?’ Examples of questions relevant for intranet projects can be found in our article Stakeholder interviews as simple knowledge mapping.
Stay tuned to what the user is not saying – take notice of body language and tone of voicePractice active listening, adopt open body language and make appropriate eye contact. Most of all respect the opinions the user is providing. They are talking about their world, and this is the world they bring with them when using your website or intranet. Your respect will build trust and openness, and this is when the true motivations, attitudes and beliefs of the user are revealed.
Analyse research data and identify persona set
Review all the research data and look for patterns in attitudes and behaviours. For example, if you interviewed people about travel, you might find patterns like users who are price driven as opposed to quality driven, users who travel frequently as opposed to infrequently, and users who prefer to research their holiday rather than asking others for suggestions.
For an intranet project, users who need to access information under strict time pressures, users who spend a large amount of
their time researching, and users who like to be seen as the experts in the organisation.
Whilst listing these patterns, you will begin to see clusters of attitudes and behaviours that make up different personas, such as the frequent traveller that is skilled in research-ing holidays and finding the best prices. This persona is motivated by keeping the cost of each holiday down so they can travel more in the future. The persona’s goal is to go on as many holidays as possible.
Once you have defined these clusters of attitudes and behaviours, give each persona a brief description, such as ‘independent traveller’or ‘bargain hunter’. There is no ideal number of personas, however try to keep the set small. Four or five personas work as effective design tools, whilst over ten personas may introduce the same confusion as a large
user requirements document.
Write personas
Start writing the personas by adding details around the behavioural traits. Select details from your research, such as working environment, frustrations, relationships with others, skill level, and some demographics. Give each persona a name and a photo, unless your organisational or team culture is better suited to the more generic personas, like Bob’s persona listed as a series of bullet points.
Here are some tips to follow regardless of whether you write your personas as narrative or bullet points.
• Keep your personas to one page, so they remain effective communication tools and can be referred to quickly during design discussions.
• Add personal details but don’t go overboard.
• Include goals for each persona. This can include experience goals as well as end goals. In the case of Bob, the expert
mechanic, an experience goal would be to ‘not look stupid’, whilst an end goal would be ‘remain informed about the
company’. To find out more about writing goals, refer to the article:www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/ perfecting_your_personas.htm
• Identify the primary and secondary personas (explained earlier on in this article) to help direct design priorities.
Once your personas are written, review them to ensure they have remained realistic and based on your research data. Check that you have a manageable number of personas, and if two personas seem close in behaviours and goals, see if you can merge them into one persona. Finally, to ensure you have a polished product, ask someone to review the personas for accuracy in spelling and grammar.
Using personas
There are many and varied ways that personas can be used. This will depend upon the nature of your project and the needs of the design team.
Here are some common ways to use personas:
• identify the features, functionality and content to develop for an intranet or website release, ensuring that value is
delivered to users from day one of the release
• determine whether one user interface will meet the goals of all users, or whether there needs to be two or more
user interfaces developed
• communicate to senior executives the vision for the new intranet or website and how it will meet the needs of the staff or
customer base
• make design decision about how a piece of functionality will work or about the creative design of the web solution
• guide the content development so that content supports the goals of the users and answers their common questions
• focus additional user analysis activities, such as task analysis
• guide an expert usability review of the existing intranet or website
• develop scenarios for usability testing
• contribute to the marketing efforts for the intranet or website
Conclusion
Understanding the needs of users is one of the most critical success factors for any intranet or website project. Understanding
these needs in a rapid fashion has arisen as project timelines have shortened and the pressure has mounted to deliver value early and often.
Personas allow you to identify and communicate user needs efficiently and effectively. By developing ‘stand in’ users, based on real user data, the design team can concentrate on designing for these archetypal users with the confidence that the needs of the broader user base will be meet.
Personas are a useful tool to use throughout the project, from deciding upon the functionality to include in a release to evaluating the end product. Teamed up with other usercentred design tools and techniques, such as task analysis and usability testing, personas will place you in good stead to deliver a useful and usable solution.