the future of personas

julia sloan@motivate_design

elements of a persona:

who they arewhat they care aboutwhat they dophoto

Q: why do we use personas?

A: to keep users at the center of design development; to facilitate conversation

“They allow us to change the topic of conversation from how best to design for

ourselves to how best to meet our customers needs. They create empathy --

we understand and care for our customers better. They allow us to understand that not all customers are created equal, and

that even one customer has different needs in different contexts.”

Director of UXMacy’s

keep asking WHY?

what does a persona provide?

strategystructure

story

“Our species has probably been telling stories throughout our history. We’re still going to be telling stories about our users to stakeholders three years from now, and we’re still going to need to share information across disciplines in the organization.”

-Aviva Rosenstein, Salesforce

what about moods?

SEE (significant emotional events)

mood vs. emotion

getty images - moodstream

moods last days/weeks/years

“

incorporated into: customer journey mapsscenariosday-in the-life

“The idea that changing a users' environment will change their behavior is at the heart of a lot of interaction

design. So the context of use matters a lot. Probably more than most of the stuff you see on a persona ('Shelly

is 32 and drives a Ford').”

-Giles ColborneAuthor of Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design

1. we don’t use them 2. users change3. too much detail4. live & die in the research

dept.5. rulebook

HOW CAN PERSONAS KEEP UP?

1. use technology to keep it easy

websitesanalyticsbig databehavioral databasesocial networks

“At Salesforce my team has built a web application for maintaining and delivering robust personas across the entire organization. …as we learn more about our users we can easily update the characteristics of existing personas or add new ones as needed, and those changes will instantly appear on the web application our internal teams use to access the personas.”-Aviva Rosenstein, Salesforce

wefeelfine.com (emotional database)

2. keep it cheap

wwsbd?(what would small businesses do?)

3. keep it real

“Personas are not a document. Persona descriptions can be a document (or a movie or any other practical rendering). But, those are just renderings of what happened during the persona creation process. Here’s the way to think of it: Personas are to Persona Descriptions as Vacations are to Souvenir Picture Albums.”

Jared Spool2008

4. keep it alive

advocatetalk to everyoneupdates on how they are used

“Use them in every conversation.”Sean McLeary

Director of UX at DocuSign Inc.

5. skip the formalities

relevantstraightforwardpart of a discussion

What's the minimum viable persona?

to recap…

1. personas give you:structurestorystrategy

2. but unacknowledged, excessive, and stale personas can trip you up

3. so…use technologykeep it cheapkeep it realbroadcastand skip the formalities

Thank you! Questions?

@motivate_designjulia@motivatedesign.com

and a big thanks to:

mona patelgiles colbornescott kincadeaviva rosensteinsean mcleary& the noun project