Laying the Groundwork for a User-centered Library with Lean Personas
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Our presentation focused on a user persona development project at Utah State University's Merrill-Cazier Library. We describe our personas as "lean" because we drew assumptions from previously-collected user research and assessment data, along with staff insight and experience, to form basic draft personas. These are then continually validated and refined against ongoing user experience research and as part of a broad user-centered library practice.
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Laying the Groundwork for a User-centered Library with Lean Personas
- 1. ALEX SUNDT | ERIN DAVIS | BECKY THOMS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A USER-CENTERED LIBRARY WITH LEAN PERSONAS
- 3. WHAT IS A LEAN APPROACH?
- 4. ABOUT USU
- 5. DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS
- 8. STAFF VALIDATION & INPUT
- 10. PERSONA DRAFTING
- 13. MAKE YOUR OWN PERSONAS! Get the template here: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_pubs/248/
- 14. QUESTIONS?
- 15. REFERENCES Cooper, A. (1999). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Indianapolis: SAMS. Edeker, K & Moorman, J. (2013) Love, hate, empathy: Why we still need personas. UX Magazine. Retrieved fromhttp://uxmag.com/articles/love-hate- and-empathy-why-we-still-need-personas Goodwin, K. (2008). Perfecting your personas. Cooper.com. Retrieved from http://www.cooper.com/journal/2001/08/perfecting_your_personas Norman, D. (2004). Ad-Hoc Personas & Empathetic Focus. JND.org. Retrieved from http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/personas_empath.html
Editor's Notes
- Personas were first developed informally by Alan Cooper, the creator of visual basic; they evolved over time as they were applied to web and system design: Fictional archetypes that represent the needs, frustrations, and motivations of broad user groups. By designing around these fictional characters, libraries can satisfy the basic needs of the large group they represent. identified by grouping together outstanding attributes, personality types, or approaches that may cut across traditional user categories, such as UG, Grad, Faculty, etc. Personas are typically developed by conducting ethnographic research, observing users in action, or by conducting in-depth interviews to uncover distinctive user attributes. You could consider them a different form of user requirements document, except that personas are more engaging and more likely to be adopted and used by the organization. By making them feel like real users, personas create empathy and help us remember and consider how to design for these needs. SHOW: Personas always have a picture, usually a silly name to make them memorable; and some biographical information. It’s important to note that this stuff is all fluff, and not important for understanding the personality. In fact, the attributes and goals of a persona, could extend across many different patron types. Real people will move across persona types, as their skills develop, goals change, etc. We simply give them a bio and a class standing to make them feel real. The second side is the real meat of the persona, drawn mostly from data and research, and really capturing the key details that bear on design and decision-making. In recent years have lost cachet in UX: 1) too broad—not all that useful for design. 2) misused if viewed as the end-all representation of users; 3) should be applied strategically and serve as a starting point for UCD- still test and other user research. We still think personas are valuable: 1) as a communication (not strictly design tool) to help generate empathy throughout the organization; 2) as an exercise in user-centered and design thinking; helping us step into users’ shoes and think beyond our
- Comes from business startup culture, but has been applied to UX and design: emphasizing a flexible, minimal process and iterative product improvement More Product, Less Process In UX, typically refers to less documentation of user research, which personas essentially are. Our approach refers to less reliance on hard data collection specifically for personas dev; instead we gathered a lot of data we already had, did a quick, unstructured analysis, and relied on staff experience and input to fill in any gaps and provide validation. Donald Norman, author of the design of everyday things, advocated for an ad-hoc approach to persona development, using persona building as more of team exercise with no research; found the personas to be a useful design tool. We take this quick and dirty approach, but mix in a lot of data, and plan to continue validating and refining as a regular part of a regular assessment practice.
- Land-grant, public research university Several regional campuses and colleges Approx. 27,662 students; 13,000 Average undergraduate student age: 22.3 - Average graduate student age: 33.8 Higher than avg. age is partly due to large LDS population, with many leaving for two year missionary trips
- Formed a working group to review UX and create assessment tools: consisted of web librarian, reference librarians, outreach/marketing librarian, and programmers LibQual Comments Open-ended responses from usability study (on Encore..a study we had done with a previous staff member) Chat transcripts and types of reference questions Subject librarian and staff experience Student interviews Took us about 2 weeks, off and on, to collect and review data, then pull out attributes
- Libqual open-ended comments; all USU comments wordcloud How could we improve the library website? -make it less cluttered -special collections can be hard to navigate -make things simple -I would like one search box that searches everything -make it less confusing and overwhelming
- Grouped attributes and made some assumptions to assign to different persona types We pulled out attributes from our data (libqual comments, focus groups, chat transcriptions, etc) We grouped them together under similar categories or user groups. We had to fill in gaps and make some assumptions We created a map of how the different affinities or attributes relate We looked at personality types that cut across - Got us away from the more cookie cutter approach “1 undergrad, 1 grad, etc” This process helped us identify different types of patrons
- 9 developed personas were printed and hung on the walls in the staff room. This room is accessed by nearly everyone who works in the library—faculty, staff, and students, and all were invited to contribute to/comment on the personas. This was a great way to get input from groups and individuals who otherwise might not have been engaged in the process. And, while we received plenty of comments that were more or less grammatical edits, there was also a lot of useful information—such as people noting particular biases that we may have missed. The original (draft) personas should have been rougher/more open (no photos). People too quickly associated the personas with a particular user which colored the perceptions of and feedback on the personas.
- Undergrad interviews- Price campus Visited one of our regional campuses and conducted 11 in-depth interviews to better understand undergraduate research habits and perceptions of the library Motivation conducting research and effort in research process emerged as key attributes. Research expertise and comfort with tools were confirmed as important attributes Confirmed early undergrads have shallow engagement with library: use it as quiet, study space, don’t mine the depths of collections and research tools Interviews were recorded and transcripts were used to analyze data Offered $10 gift cards to thank them for their time
- Creating draft user personas Met several times to review and improve Started with 9 personas representing core audiences of undergrads, grads, and faculty; categories of distance/non-traditional and traditional; skill levels of novice-intermediate-expert ranges of tech and research skills Reduced this down to 6 based on common attributes that cut across these categories.
- We created 6 personas, with biographical info aligned with our main user groups 2 faculty, one early, regional campus; one older, established, main campus 2 undergrads, one traditional, one returning 1 grad student 1 community user
- We’re exploring different ways to create tangible representations of the personas that are accessible to everyone who works in the library. May approach this in a couple of different ways—card-sized copies that people can keep at their desks; larger, laminated versions (that could be written on with dry erase markers) in the various library meeting and conference rooms; Introducing and encouraging application Alex: creating “customer journey maps” to show how each persona progresses through the website/library to fulfills their goals Becky using in Digital Initiatives dept: how do these different personas approach using digital library, digital commons? Erin: applying personas to distance service and reference? What are their needs and how to cater to the majority Continuing validation and improvement Greater sense of users from usability testing/interviews Testing personas with focus groups? Trial by fire: put them into practice with different depts, see how well they perform in real setting
- Trust your instincts as user experts. Personas originally came from market research and software design—domains that are often separated from their core customers—so it is important for them to conduct in-depth ethnographic studies to better understand users. Libraries aren’t like software companies—they work and interact with their users everyday; library practice is inherently user-oriented and often embedded with users Draw from data to make reasonable assumptions The key is adopting a user-centered perspective and training yourself to avoid stereotypes or uncritical assumptions Just do it. You can always validate the personas moving forward—in fact you should—but at least you are taking steps toward evaluating the library from your users’ perspective