Personas 7-1-08 v6SakaiPost

Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs
Allison Bloodworth, Senior User Interaction Designer, Educational Technology Services, University of California - Berkeley
July 2, 2008
Agenda
What is user-centered design?

What are personas?
Gathering data about users
Creating personas
Using personas in the design & development
process
What is user-centered design?
User-centered design is a product development

methodology based on actual user needs, behaviors,
abilities and perceptions.
User-centered design is used by UC Berkeley because it
offers the most effective path to useful and usable
products.
Personas put a human face on the amorphous user
because they are based on actual user needs. They save
time by focusing development toward real use cases and
away from unlikely edge cases.
Whats in it for me?
Programmers benefit from personas and user-centered design by

not having to write code that is not needed by the target users.
Who wants to make something that won't be used?
Business analysts benefit from personas and user-centered

design because the goals, tasks, and needs of the target users are
well-defined for them. They don't have to imagine or invent.
User-centered design at
Berkeley
Focuses on understanding:
Who are the users?
What are their goals?
Goals drive a persons actions
Tasks are things a person does in order to
accomplish his goals
What are their pain points?
What are their motivations?
To drive system definition & design
Why focus on user goals vs.
(current) tasks?
The way people do things today is often merely the

product of the obsolete systems and and organizations
they are forced to interact with, and typically bear little
resemblance to the way they would like to do things, or
they way they would be most effective.
About Face 3.0
Just putting existing processes on-line often is not enough

Improving processes is often the best way help users
achieve their goals
User-centered design at
Berkeley
User Research
Modeling
Requirements Definition
UI Framework Definition
UI Design
Development Support
User Research Modeling Requirements Definition UI Framework Definition UI Design Development Support
User-centered design at Berkeley
User-centered design at Berkeley
User Research
Ethnography and empathic research

Observation & interviews
Study users in their context
Centered on users goals and activities
Look for patterns
Modeling
Make sense of research findings

Personas
Mental models
Use cases - current or future processes
Use case frequency matrix
Activity diagrams - more complex processes
Artifact models
Helps gain consensus early onbefore any design
happens
Provides shared language & vision
Persona: Michael the Moderately
Seasoned Professional
Source: Todd Warfel "Data Driven Personas: http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-personas
Requirements Definition
Refined based on:

User needs
Business goals
Customer needs
Context Scenarios
New processes, context of use
How users complete an activity
Scenarios
A design technique used to envision future use of a system

Focusing on how users can achieve their goals
Helps designers & developers understand how system
will really be used
A story about a particular persona interacting with the
system
May be based on a use case, or a set of use cases
Can be used for usability testing
Scenarios become progressively more detailed
Types of Scenarios
1. Context Scenarios
High-level, no interaction details
Focus is on how the user can achieve her goals
Part of Requirements Definition phase
2. Key path scenarios
Incorporate functional and data needs into the
scenarios
Part of the next phase: UI Framework Definition phase
Example Scenarios
Context Scenario
Lisa is in lecture and realizes shes confused when the instructor starts
talking about mitosis. She takes note of the time.
Later that day she opens up her bSpace course site and goes directly to
the webcast for that day and reviews the portions of lecture via the
webcast she needed clarification on.
Key Path Scenario
Lisa is in lecture and realizes shes confused when the instructor starts
talking about mitosis. She takes note of the time.
Later that day she opens up her bSpace course site clicks on the Most
Recent Webcast link. bSpace switches to the Use Webcast View
and the webcast for the day plays.
Lisa looks at her notes to see the time she noted earlier, and enters it
into the Lecture Time field and presses Enter. The lecture jumps
forward to the point where the instructor was talking about mitosis.
UI Framework Definition
High level design

What pages do we have?
What panes need to exist within the pages and how do
they work together?
What design elements are included in each page, pane,
etc.?
Should be a holistic view of the design, not too detailed
Key path scenarios
Allows for iterating on the details
Start talking about technical feasibility
UI design
Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose

meaningful order
Interaction design AND visual design

How does it behave?
What does it look like?
How does it make users feel?
Wireframes, mock-ups, and/or prototypes
Development Support
Constant communication
No throwing it over the wall
Continuous iterations as we learn more from
development
What are personas?
Basic definition
A persona is a user archetype you can use to help
guide decisions about product features, navigation,
interactions, and even visual design. - Kim Goodwin,
Cooper
User models
Models can consolidate complex information into an
(easy to remember) abstraction
Remembering & making sense of all the raw data would
be impossible without them
Persona: Sarah Windsor,
Overwhelmed Faculty
From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Sarah+Windsor+-+Primary+Persona
Source: Sakai
From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Sarah+Windsor+-+Primary+Persona
Persona dos and donts
Should:
be based on user research
be based primarily on qualitative research
be focused on users goals
be based on common behavior patterns
be specific to your design context or problem
come to life, and seem like real people
Should not:
be focused on stereotypes or generalizations
be an average of observed behavior patterns
be based only on user roles
be based only on information gathered from subject matter
experts, as they cannot completely represent end users
Why use personas?
Focus
Empathy
Gaining consensus
Avoiding the elastic user
Why use personas?
Focus
Designing for too many different types of users makes a
product too complex to truly satisfy any of them
Pleasing some users often conflicts with pleasing
others--must have a way to make choices
Helps prevent focusing the design on:
edge cases
averages
Why use personas?
Empathy
People are wired to be attuned to other people
Helps put yourself in the users shoes
Helps avoid self-referential design
Facilitates the use of role playing to:
make design decisions
evaluate designs
Why use personas?
Gaining consensus
Give the team a shared understanding (early on!) of
who they users are and what they need
Without personas, the team may be disagreeing about who
the users are, rather than actual design decisions, without
even knowing it
Gives the team a tool to reason through design
decisions
Why use personas?
Avoiding the elastic user

If the users havent been clearly defined, they may
stretch to fit the needs of the product team
Our students are very tech-savvy, and will certainly be able
to figure that out.
Students just wont be able to understand how to do this.
We need to create a wizard.
Types of personas
Design Personas
User Personas (most common)
Customer/Buyer Personas
Served Personas
Negative Personas
Provisional Personas
Other types of Personas
Marketing Personas
Strategy Personas
Organization Personas
Personas usually contain
Goals
Attitudes (related to your context)
Behaviors & Tasks (in your context)
Photo
Name
Tagline
Scenarios
Demographic info
Skill level
Environment
Types of personas
Primary persona
A persona whose needs must be satisfied
Multiple primary personas require separate interfaces
Secondary, tertiary, etc. personas
Personas whose needs should be considered after
those of the primary persona(s)
A persona is made secondary because their needs can
be mostly met if the design is focused on the primary
persona
Primary Persona: Ernest the
Engaged Employee
Work is important, but not my whole life.
Personal Information
Profession: Data Architect
Age: 43
Background: Originally from upstate New York
Education: BS in Library Science from Columbia. Is continuing his education informally, by sitting in on classes at UC
Berkeleys School of Information whenever he can. Attends industry conferences about once a year.
UCB Background: Fell into a technical position at UC Berkeley 8 years ago after working in libraries.
Home Life: Has been married for 15 years and has two children, ages 6 and 13. Their family has a pet Cockatoo. He is
interesting in volunteering some time at his 6-year-olds Montessori School in Berkeley.
Hobbies: Photography (learning Photoshop)
Personality: Efficient, detail-oriented, dedicated. Enjoys meeting new people and learning about them.
User Goals
To be as efficient as possible at work so he can spend as much quality time with his family as possible
To make more money
To continue to learn
To improve his photography & perhaps make it more of a business
Pain Points
After the IST re-org, some processes have been unclear, and hes often had to hunt around for the right person to get
things done.
Too many passwords to remember
Too many collaborative tools being used in organization
Information he needs is all over the place, not organized efficiently
Site Objectives
Help Ernest find the information he needs quickly & easily
Clarify the IST/OCIO information available instead of adding just another site to the confusion
Help Ernest learn about and connect with the IST/OCIO community
Sakai Persona Map
From: http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/ENC/Sakai+Personas
Methods used for gathering
information for personas
User observation
Contextual inquiries
Interviews
Focus groups
Diary studies
Existing data
Existing knowledge
How are personas created?
Persona hypothesis
User research
Identify behavioral variables/attributes
Persona scales
Choose personas
Write personas
Communicate personas
Persona hypothesis
A starting point to help determine what types of users to

research
Created before talking to end users
Based on information gathered from stakeholders, SMEs, your
personal knowledge, and review of existing literature
Hypothesized behavior patterns
Should not be based purely on demographics
Differentiate users based on needs and behaviors
More user types can be added later if research points to other
types
Often map to roles in a non-consumer domain (e.g. education)
Can be just a rough outline/list of user goals & behavior
patterns you expect to see
Fluid CM research: User
behavior/characteristic matrices
User types (Roles)
Technical level
Application (CMS) use Country/region
Class structure Type of institution
Group size From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/vgIa
User research
Interview & observe users in the context of their work

Use focus structure document to guide each user visit
Take detailed notes & photos
Capture interesting quotes
Use symbols in notes to organize info
Process raw notes into a more categorized & synthesized
format
Create summaries of notes
Raw notes
- Works both at home and in her (very organized) office; carries
her PC back and forth
- Seminar: posts multiple discussion questions each week, has
students respond to 1 each week. Part of participation grade
which is 25% of their total grade.
- Would like students to have a one stop shop where they can get
all info for her class: website, bSpace, Library Resources
- Throughout the semester she puts all her grades in Excel; she has
mostly quizzes and exams, and only has a few assignments
Wants to be able to save copies of files having to do with students on
her local drive
Helpful info if students ask for recommendations later
- Shes usually only a week ahead of the class in her preparation,
which may change in the future when shes taught the class more
Categorized Notes - Content
Management
Interview/Observation Setup Typical/Good/Bad day

Persona Info (personal details) Course Details
Context of work Schedule/Organization
Teaching style/format General CMS/LMS use &
activities
Computer/Technology use Types of course materials
Use cases/Activities Communication
Pain points/Opportunities/Time Content Reuse
wasters Photos
User goals
Identify variables
Personas should be based on observed behavior patterns

Identify the behavioral variables which differentiate your
interviewees
Two by two comparison - UIE.com method
Read two randomly chosen summaries
List attributes that make interviewees similar & different
Replace one of the summaries with another randomly chosen
one
Repeat until all summaries are read
Choose endpoints of scales
Persona scales
Distinctions
Roles
Support running class
Timing of posting materials
Primary type of communication
Number of computers
Overall goal
change the field
teach students
get published
Previous LMS use
Years teaching
Years at current institution
Large, small or both classes
Discipline
From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Content+Management+Research+Models
Choose personas
Determine list of potential personas based on common

behavioral patterns
Sanity check
Do they make sense? Do they reflect what weve seen? Are
there too many to be useful? Will they help us make design
decisions?
Finalize initial persona list
Write personas
Draft persona characteristics & goals for each persona

If possible, all info should come from actual user research (your notes)
All persona information should be relevant to your design context
Check persona set
Anything missing?
Any redundant personas?
Write the persona descriptions
Some bulleted lists, some narrative
You may have multiple formats depending on your teams needs
A few personal details OK
Try to relate them to your design
Add them last
Choose primary, secondary, etc. persona(s)
Fluid Content Management
Personas
Instructor Personas
Ahmad Yousef George

(Faculty - Tenure- Ahmad Yousef
McFadden
track History) (Faculty - Tenure- George McFadden
(Online Instructor
track History)
- Journalism) (Online Instructor - Henry Sibley
Journalism)
(Longtime Faculty -
Chemistry)
Catalina De Silva
(Faculty - GSI Manager
in Spanish)
Sergio Rossi Stacey Pearson

(Graduate Teaching (Graduate Teaching
Robin McCoy Assistant - Urban Assistant - Biochemistry)
(Faculty - Business School) Affairs & Planning)
Personas
Student Personas
Christy Gonzola Ashley Myles Shaina Wiseman Andy Wright

(Undergraduate Student (Undergraduate (Graduate Student - (Graduate Student -
- Molecular & Cell Student - Acheology) Land Development) Information Studies)
Biology)
Personas
Instructional Support Staff Personas
Michael Demsky Anita Stalmach

(Departmental Support - Biology) (Departmental Pedagogy
Support - Instructional
Designer)
Stacy Pearson - TA Trainer/
Graduate

Teaching Assistant
Characteristics
Lives in the suburbs, about 40 minutes outside the city by
car, with her parents
Is a 3rd year PhD student with a specialty in Biochemistry,
and has been TAing since 2004
Comes in everyday at 6:30am and spends all day on
campus until around 5pm. She does most of the work on
campus, in the lab and in her office, and none at home.
She coordinates the TA training program where she trains
TAs through the office of Teaching Advancement. With "I'm all manual. Papers,
other coordinators, she organizes workshops for TAs on folders, and binders.
how to teach students.
She uses Blackboard as a TA but is not a huge fan. She Main Points:
only login when she gets an email notification with Uses physical folders, binders,
important announcements. and drawers to organize her
She uses a highly paper-based file organization system. reading materials
She prints out course materials and organizes them into Teaches TAs how to teach
binders in chronological order. students
If she needs to take files home, she emails her files to her Concerned about Mac-PC
Yahoo account. compatibility when transferring
Goals files
Get her PhD Frustrated that she doesn't
Become a better teacher have access to the LMS her
students are using
From: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/x/fY4
Communicate personas
Introductory workshop
Posting one or two page summaries in work areas
Laminated sheet containing short summaries of all
personas
Persona deck of cards
Have everyone put a persona on their door to
represent who they identify with
Set up a work area for a persona
Persona Resources
Books
About Face 3.0
The Persona Lifecycle
Practical Personas: The User Is Always Right
Presentations
UIE's Building Robust Personas in 30 Days or Less:
http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/building_personas/
"data driven design research personas:"
http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-design-research-
personas
"The user is always right: Making Personas Work for Your Site:"
http://www.slideshare.net/MulderMedia/the-user-is-always-right-making-
personas-work-for-your-site
Articles
Building a data-backed persona:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-a-data
Personas vs. User Descriptions:
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/11/15/personas-vs-user-
descriptions-apples-vs-tomatoes/
Questions?
Lets talk during the conference!

Check out the Fluid UX Toolkit:
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UX+Toolkit
Contact info:
Allison Bloodworth, University of California, Berkeley:
abloodworth@berkeley.edu
Persona Example: Matthew
Johnson, USDA Senior
Manager
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS),

http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html

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Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs

What is user-centered design?

User-centered design is a product development

Programmers benefit from personas and user-centered design by

Business analysts benefit from personas and user-centered

The way people do things today is often merely the

Just putting existing processes on-line often is not enough

Ethnography and empathic research

Make sense of research findings

Source: Todd Warfel "Data Driven Personas: http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-personas

Refined based on:

A design technique used to envision future use of a system

High level design

Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose

Interaction design AND visual design

Avoiding the elastic user

A starting point to help determine what types of users to

Interview & observe users in the context of their work

Interview/Observation Setup Typical/Good/Bad day

Personas should be based on observed behavior patterns

Determine list of potential personas based on common

Draft persona characteristics & goals for each persona

Ahmad Yousef George

Sergio Rossi Stacey Pearson

Christy Gonzola Ashley Myles Shaina Wiseman Andy Wright

Instructional Support Staff Personas

Michael Demsky Anita Stalmach

Lets talk during the conference!

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS),

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