From Personas to Production: The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation/Design/Build Process

The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards and Wireframes in the Ideation/Design/Build Process Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience

It’s easy to become trapped into a product-‐ or market-‐ centered perspective… and lose site of what the customer needs. The UX ﬁeld gives you tools to put and keep focus on the customer, release after release. 2

It’s easy, actually… Go visit the customers Proﬁle them Build personas from the proﬁles Tell the customers’ stories (“agile”-‐ly) Illustrate the stories 3

And most importantly… Socialize and share your customer insights! I’ll tell you how at the end. 4

Too product-‐focused: Thinking about the product in terms of the features it supports. 6

Leads to feature matrix thinking… And a “presence-‐ absence” mindset… Which de-‐ emphasizes designing to satisfy users’ goals and workﬂow. 7

Too market-‐focused: Thinking about customers at the market level, not in terms of individuals, their goals, and their workﬂow. 8

Knowing your segment and competitors doesn’t tell you how to design the product! 9

  Know the product   Know the market   Know the people who use the product! 10

That is… know your customers’…   Capabilities and constraints   Goals   Workﬂow   Context of use Note: you can’t get this from a survey or a focus group session. 11

Go visit the customers where they use your product or service… not in a focus group facility! 13

Why? Two great reasons: 1.  Self-‐report is unreliable. (People don’t mean to lie, they just do.) 2.  Remove people from their context, and you can’t see – and they can’t remember -‐ the details of their tasks. 14

“Can’t you just figure that stuff out?” Not so much… Good product design flows from understanding the users…and understanding them means observing them. 16

“We don’t have time to go into the ﬁeld!” I call BS on that… It’s not hard or time-‐consuming if done right…plus it prevents churn. 17

“It’s too expensive!” You can do quality user research for a few thousand dollars. If you can’t aﬀord that, you have other problems. 18

Generating insights from ﬁeld observation is not hard or time-‐consuming. But sharing and socializing it is critical. We’ll cover this before the end of the session. 19

Have I convinced you that you need qualitative, detailed, individual-‐level user research? If not, let me tell you a story… 20

At my former company we nearly missed a big gap in the product experience… …and we only found the problem through ﬁeld observations. 21

What did we miss? The install experience was too hard. We thought it was decent. but when we took the beta to new customers and watched what happened… we wanted to cry. 22

…unless we watched them! 23

1.  Converting observation insights into useful product management and design guidance. 2.  Using the content to socialize insights, attain alignment, and maintain focus on the customer. 25

How many of you write business requirements documents? 26

Does it look something like this? 27

Where’s the user in that? Yeah, there’s actors…but does UML really tell you anything about your users? 29

A “diﬀerent” kind of BRD… [show sample] 30

A BRD with business requirements AND…   A design brief   Personas built from user observations   User stories (in agile format)   Storyboards with wireframes 31

You tell me. 32

Don’t make it too complex! Include stuﬀ like goals, tasks and context. But don’t go crazy… it’s not rocket science! 33

Again, don’t go crazy. Let me show you wireframes and storyboard for part of an app I’m working on this week. Context: I am designing a way for people to create an update, like on Twitter or Facebook. 36

Your immediate goal is to get the product built right. But what you really want to do is get your organization aligned on the customer experience. How? 43

Placemats, pictures, posters, wall space… 44

What’s my point? When you go to the ﬁeld, proﬁle users, and build personas, you’re gaining incredible insight into your customer base. Bring your developers and management along on this journey! 45

If you can’t physically bring them to the field, share what you’ve gleaned from the field back at the office: Hang it on your walls & boards Make “persona placemats” and leave them in the lunchroom Put persona or profile “posters” in every meeting room 46

This is how you align your organization on the user experience – by sharing the ﬁeld insights. 47

  Visit your customers in their environment!   Proﬁle them, make personas and tell their stories.   Storyboard their stories with wireframes.   Get your organization to really understand the customer….not just the market or the product! 48

What are your experiences in this area? 49

Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience www.shermanux.com paul@shermanux.com Twitter: @pjsherman 50

From Personas to Production: The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation/Design/Build Process

by Paul Sherman on Aug 15, 2009

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From Personas to Production: The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation/Design/Build Process — Presentation Transcript

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