personas in interaction design

Personas in Interaction DesignHans Põldoja

cbaThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Estonia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ee/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

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Personas as a design tool

• Determine what a product should do and how it should behave

• Communicate with stakeholders, developers and other designers

• Build consensus and commitment to the design

• Measure the design’s effectiveness

• Contribute to marketing

(Cooper & Reimann, 2003)

Personas are based on research

• Real-world observations

• Ethnographic interviews

• Contextual inquiry


Ethnographic interviews

• Interview where the interaction happens

• Avoid a fixed set of questions

• Focus on the goal first, tasks second

• Avoid making the user a designer

• Avoid discussion of technology

• Avoid leading questions

• Ask for stories, demonstrations and a tour


Contextual inquiry

• Context: interview should take place in the environment where the product is actually used

• Partnership

• Interpretation: reading between the lines

• Focus: direct the interview as new issues arise


When research is not possible...

• Information about the users supplied by stakeholders and subject matter experts

• Market research data such as focus groups and surveys

• Market segmentation models

• Data gathered from literature reviews and previous studies


Persona types

• Primary (1)

• Secondary (0...2)

• Supplemental

• Customer

• Served: non-users affected by the use of the product

• Negative


Persona’s elements

• Photo

• Background info (age, gender, computer, tech skills, disabilities, ...)

• Goals

• Information seeking styles

• Usability needs


Goals

• Goals must be inferred from qualitative data

• Each goal should be expressed as a simple sentence


User goals

Life goals

✓ Be the best at what I do

✓ Learn all there is to know about this field

Experience goals

✓ Don’t feel stupid

✓ Don’t make mistakes

✓ Have fun

End goals

✓ Find the best price

✓ Process the customer’s order


Non-user goals

Customer goals

✓ Be sure about the child’s safety

Corporate goals

✓ Increase market share

✓ Use resources more efficiently

Technical goals

✓ Support all major browsers

✓ Maintain consistency across platforms


Examples

FeedFordward remix your information environment

Persona: Laura, 11 June 2007

Laura Marsden

* 28 years old, engaged, female* PhD in environmental design and planning* Currently a lecturer in the School of Built Environment at University* Confident experimenter with the Internet but has a lot of gaps in her knowledge that keep cropping up and vexing her as she doesn't feel very 'technical'* Has used bibliographic tools in the past but prefers to rely on a known canon of classic works and textbooks on her bookshelf

"I need to know what my students are writing about, and how it relates to the 'real world'"

background

attributes* enthusiastic - possible early adopter* less experienced with computers and internet* less experienced in research

user needs* Keep up with students posts and be able to make comments related to them* keep up to date with new developments, especially new building projects and planning applications* generate new ideas for student activities* effective help for when stuck

Laura is a lecturer in Built Environment Studies at a traditional University. She's been experimenting with using blogs for student work and has found the experience really good, but has had problems keeping up with the sheer volume of posts. As a result she hasn't been commenting on or highlighting particular work in a consistent and methodical manner.

She's also aware that also she hasn't been keeping abreast of new developments, particularly local construction works and planning applications that would make good cases to look at with her students, but also with new developments and trends in urban planning generally.

Laura is very enthusiastic about using technology in her job, but thinks that the amount of time it takes her to work with students using her current approach will mean too much work for larger student groups.

profile

scenario needs feature behaviour

Laura decides to track what her students have been writing over the past week so she can decide whether to post a comment on their work. She decides rather than comment now she'll do it later when she has more quiet time available - there's some other work she has to do.

*Manage attention *Scan and Decide*Defer action

*Mixer *Radar*Context

Laura wants to set up her application so it can track her student's blogs and post to her own blog.

* Guidance Laura starts the application and begins filling in the information in the First Run Wizard. It asks her for the blogs she wants to monitor, and her blog she wants to post to. It asks her to define her contexts and she chooses "comment on student work for ..." for each cohort she is teaching.

Initially the Radar has a lot of items, and so she decides to try the Mixer. She adjusts upwards the slider for the course she is teaching tomorrow and slides down the others. The number of posts in the radar now looks a lot more manageable.

Laura scans the Radar and sees a good point made by one student, but which would be made better with an appropriate reference. She drags the item to her "comment on student work for..." context and continues scanning, adding a few more items as she goes.

* Wizard

She decides to write comments and publish them so that her students can see the comments.

*Editing control*Publishing control

*Context*Entry Editor*Conduits: AtomPP + Trackback

Working down the list in the "comment on student work for..." context, she creates a new Entry in and drags into it the Item she selected earlier - it appears in "references".

She writes a comment, and then saves the entry. She then drags the comment onto "Laura's Teaching Blog". The application publishes the comment, and sends a Trackback Ping to the student's blog refenced in the entry. The Entry alters its state to show it was published successfully.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

UK: England & Wales License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

(The FeedForward Blog, 2007a)

Persona: Zoe, 13 June 2007

Zoe Pascal

* 20 years old, single, female* GCSEs* Currently studying part-time diploma in Visual Arts; working in a cafe* Like using the Internet, especially Flickr and MySpace* No real interest in using bibliographic services - prefers using books* Very visually-oriented

"Inspire me!"

background

attributes* younger* experimenter - possible early adopter, but high threshold for retention* less experienced with computers and internet* less experienced in research

user needs* Be provoked by inspiring images* Produce new collages from Internet images* Keep up to date on what other students (who aren't MySpace users) are creating* Keep notified of course activities and deadlines* very visual mode of thinking and working

Zoe is very enthusiastic about visual art, and has been working on a portfolio of pieces using a lot of digital collage. She's been using Flickr and doing Google Image searches, but keeps coming back to a few key themes.

She recently started on a local part-time course in Visual Arts which has a series of structured activities that she needs to keep on top of - she has two part-time jobs, waitressing and working as a volunteer at a community project, and sometimes finds it difficult to keep track of everything.

profile

scenario needs feature behaviour

She wants to sort and play with the images to see if any combinations look interesting

*Serendipity*Flexibility*Visual sorting*Speed

*Mixer *Radar*Context*Items View

Zoe wants to add images using particular Flickr tags to her mix

* Ease of use Zoe drags the URLs of the tags from her browser onto a blank FeedForward InputManager. The application does a quick behind-the-scenes check of the site and discovers an RSS feed for the photostream. It adds each one as a new input source

Zoe plays with the Mixer sliders to alter the composition of items in the Radar. She uses the Tiles view of Radar, which shows previews in squares.

Zoe creates a new context called "Friction", and opens its Storyboard. She drags items into it from the Radar, and moves and resizes the items to make an interesting display

* Input Manager

Zoe decides she wants to make a full work based on the items she has collected and arranged. She wants to make a large-scale work so needs the full images not previews.

*Flexible export *Items View*Images Conduit

Zoe drags the "Friction" context onto the Images conduit. The conduit pops up a "select folder location" dialog, and Zoe selects the Desktop. FeedForward inspects the items and extracts the image links; it then downloads the images to Zoe's Desktop.

She constructs a collage using the printouts of the images plus a range of other media, and then scans the result.

She decides to show a small preview of her work via her blog

*Ease of editing*Ease of publishing

*Context*Atom Conduit with Attachments feature

Zoe selects "Friction" in Contexts, and in the Storyboard view clicks the "New entry" icon. The Entry Editor launches, and she writes a quick bit of text about the work. She clicks the "image" icon in the Editor and selects the collage JPG on her desktop. She clicks Save, and the Entry sits on the Storyboard.

She then drags the entry onto the "Zoe's Blog" icon, and the application publishes the entry and uploads the image attachment.

Other scenarios for this user:

Course activitiesPeer monitoring

Or another persona?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

FeedForward remix your information environment

(The FeedForward Blog, 2007b)

Age: 26

Education: Master student

Occupation: librarian

MariaMaria has studied information science and now she is doing her Masterʼs studies in interactive media. At the same time she has a full time job as a school librarian. Therefore she is interested in combining school assignments with her work as much as possible. At the same time she is a self-directed learner who likes to go in depth in topics that are interesting for her.

Goals:

Personalization: “It is hard to have a full time job and be a master student at the same time. If possible, then I try to choose assignments that can be connected with my work.”

Scaffolding: “I feel that often it is difficult to specify all the resources and actions that I have to make in order to achieve my learning objectives. Good examples from other learners help me to refine my contract.”

Awareness: “It was good that we had to review our learning contracts. This way I was constantly aware of my objectives and thinking about the strategy to achieve my goals.”

Photo by Alessandro Valli,taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/liquene/4435467897/

(LeContract blog, 2010)

Age: 34

Education: PhD student

Occupation: university lecturer

DianaDiana is a PhD student and university lecturer in educational sciences. She completed her Masterʼs as a biology teacher and worked in a school for several years. She was eager to try various pedagogical methods and finally decided to start PhD studies in educational sciences.

Now she is teaching a few courses in the university. One of the methods that she is using in her courses is a personal learning contract. She can really see how the learning contracts help some students to improve the way they learn. On the other hand for some students it is difficult to come up with a meaningful learning contract.

Goals:

Thinking in details: “I can give feedback to studentsʼ goals and help them to refine their learning contracts already in the beginning of the course. This encourages them to think in details.”

Planning the learning environment: “It is good to know what kind of resources and tools students are planning to use. This way I can design the learning environment according to their needs.”

Staying on track: “We are reviewing the learning contracts in the middle of the course. I can see what kind of progress the students have made and make necessary changes to the course.”Photo by Russell James Smith,

taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/7006464/


Age: 38

Education: Bachelorʼs degree, taking online courses from foreign universities

Occupation: photographer

CarlCarl has completed BA in computer science. He worked as a programmer for more than a decade. Carl is interested travelling, photography, history and foreign cultures. He is also an active user of Web 2.0 environments.

With years of experience he has become quite good photographer. A few years ago he decided to quit his programming job and started to work as a freelancer wedding photographer. Now he has more time for hobbies.

He has found out that quite a few foreign universities provide online courses in foreign cultures, history, etc. He likes the fact that he can study many interested topics but on the other hand he is worried about the lack of community feeling in online courses.

Goals:

Social networking: “I think that collaboration with other participants is very important in e-learning courses. Learning contracts help me to find other people with whom I have similar learning goals.”

Collaboration: “I realized that learning contracts are specially valuable for group work. This way we can easily divide roles and responsibilities in a group.”

Photo by greenkozi,taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/themacinator/3576296437/


Age: 58

Education: PhD

Occupation: professor

JakobJakob is a professor of industrial design. He has been working in the university for almost 30 years. As a designer and researcher he has participated in many R&D projects but his real love is teaching.

In last few years Jakob has decided to spend less time on projects and travelling. This means that he has more time for preparing his courses and trying out different things. He has experimented with blogs and social software. In his last course he decided to try personal learning contracts. It took quite a lot of time but he hopes that learning contracts will help him to give a more personal learning experience for his students.

Goals:

Adjusting the course: “I would like to know what the students expect to learn in my course. Then I can adjust the course assignments according to their needs.”

Personalized support: “I want to give more personalized guidance and support for my students.”

Fair grading: “I donʼt like grading but in some courses I am required to do it. I have found that learning contracts help me on fair grading. I rely on learning contracts when I negotiate grades with my students.”

Photo by Jesse Courtemanche,taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesse757/4170721132/


Some suggestions

Some suggestions

• Start brainstorming with sticky notes

• Keep certain persons in mind but combine their goals and descriptions into personas

• Mindmapping helps when writing persona descriptions

EduFeedr personas

Primary persona

Examples

Teemu

Hans

Mart

Secondary persona

ExamplesTerje

Kairit

Supplemental personas

Goals

To get a quick overview of latest posts in the course

Description

34 years old lecturer, long time doctoral student, has background in education but is quite technically savvy, early adopter of new technologies, has long experience in

online learning, wantʼs to try out something different in each course, is participating in several projects and

travelling quite often, has a constant lack of time, often reads the blog posts from his iphone but is planning to write comments later, sometimes leaves the laptop at work

and writes comments from his iPad. Understands that the technology may have certain limitations when it is still

under development.

To give better feedback for the students

To have multiple ways for browsing the course

Teacher

ExamplesVarje

Heikki

Student

Examples

Maris

Elyna

Goals

To create a functional learning community

To give support and feedback for all students

To use course data for research purposes

Description

28 years old PhD student, teaching her second online course, average computer user, experienced in using web 2.0 tools, very systematic, wants to use course data for research purposes. Wantʼs to have a reliable system. Is using desktop RSS

reader in addition to EduFeedr.

Goals

Description

Goals

Not to spend to much time on managing the course

To make students to submit their assignments on time

To be sure that the system is reliable

Description

Teacher in a vocational school, has some experience both in using Moodle and in using social software. Wantʼs to have his first blog-based course. Is not using RSS

reader.

To find inspiration from other student blogs

To explore other open courses

Customer personaEducational technologist

Examples

Krista

Marge

Marko

Negative persona

ExamplesAnne

Goals

To have one learning platform that satisfies all her needs

To customize the learning platform according to her taste and needs

Goals

Description

To get teachers using the system

To be sure that the system is reliable

Not to spend too much time on supporting the users

...

...

Description...

Ilya

To get statistics about the use in their institution

Finding photos

• Royalty free photos: http://www.sxc.hu

• Creative Commons licensed photos: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/

http://www.sxc.hu

http://www.sxc.hu

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0/




Design each interface for a single primary

persona.


References

• Cooper, A., Reinmann, R. (2003). About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

• The FeedForward Blog (2007a). How Laura uses FF. http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/feedforward/2007/10/18/how-laura-uses-ff/

• The FeedForward Blog (2007b). How Zoe uses FF. http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/feedforward/2007/10/24/how-zoe-uses-ff/

• LeContract blog (2010). http://blog.lecontract.org

http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/feedforward/2007/10/18/how-laura-uses-ff/




http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/feedforward/2007/10/24/how-zoe-uses-ff/




http://blog.lecontract.org

http://blog.lecontract.org

Photos

• Nicolas Nova, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nnova/2081056587/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nnova/2081056587/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nnova/2081056587/

Thank You!

• [email protected]

• http://imkedesign.wordpress.com

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://imkedesign.wordpress.com

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