Provisional Persona Workshop 1.0

1. Provisional* Personas Workshop *AKA Proto-Personas, Ad Hoc Personas, Strawman Personas, Skeletal Personas, or Pragmatic Personas 2:15 Mo Goltz

2. Provisional Personas   These are your current best guesses as to describing and understanding who is currently using (or will use) your product and why. They are not full, research backed personas.

3. Why   expose what you know,   and what you don’t about your users

4. Beneﬁts When you use this process -‐ you will come across things you just don’t know. ! For those things that you don’t know and that do ma;er, you can create a backlog of research that you need to do. ! This backlog will help inform and focus subsequent research.

5. Beneﬁts ability to test hypothesis and assumpAons you already have ! target areas that will require more inquiry ! gives the team a structure for collecAng and organizing informaAon as it comes up ! help your team understand personas and why they are important ! help your team pracAce and perfect persona creaAon methods

6. It’s recommend that you create provisional personas whether or not you plan to collect ﬁrst-‐hand data about your target users.

7. Agenda 1 2 3 4 Identification & Segmentation 0:15 Attribute Profiling (discrete) 1:00 break Spectrum Profiling (continuous)! 1:15 Personification 0:20

8. Stage 1   Identiﬁcation " & Segmentation 0:15

9. Purpose Determine who uses your soGware. What kinds or types of people are they? How would you divide this crowd into meaningful groups?

10. Disclaimer No ma;er how informed or thorough the reasoning, there are always mulAple ways to create segments. ! There is no one right way to segment your users….  but that’s OK. ! As long as you determine users that are important to you and your business , you will have succeeded, no ma;er how you segment your user base.

11. It is more important that a persona be precise than accurate.   That is, it is more important to deﬁne the persona in great and speciﬁc detail than that the persona be the precisely correct one. – Alan Cooper

12. Precision Accuracy

13. Identiﬁcation & Segmentation Activities 1. think of all the people who currently use, or could use your so5ware how are users typically categorized how do you think they should be categorized industry and roles are a good place to start  5 min 2. name each type of user, and put each kind of user on its own s7cky note, then place it on the wall  10 min 3. cluster, group, and eliminate duplicates as needed Discuss whether there are too many or too few categories consolidate or divide personas as needed Don’t spend too long debaAng this, as the number of categories will evolve over the course of this exercise

14. Stage 2   Attribute Proﬁling 1:00

15. Purpose How would you describe they types of people that use your so4ware?   As a team, what are the common, average, or dominant characteris<cs that are meaningful and make each type of users diﬀerent than the others? Describe these traits as discrete data points. 43 years old 30% of users I need to make the quota this month

16. Attribute Proﬁling Activities Get out four colors of s7cky notes Color one: demographics and environment Color two: responsibiliAes, needs / wants, moAvaAons, and goals Color three: pain points Color four: design imperaAves

17. Attribute Profiling Activities 5 min For each type of user determine 1. color one: demographics, and environment Gender Age Size of populaAon as a percentage or raw number (best guess) size of company and/or office (best guess) fill out s7cky notes  one concept per note  brain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team 5 min cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)  you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering determine if anything is missing

18. Attribute Profiling Activities 5 min For each type of user determine 2. color two: responsibili7es, needs / wants, mo7va7ons, and goals I have to___ I need to ___ I want to ___ fill out s7cky notes  one concept per note  brain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team 10 min cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)  you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering determine if anything is missing

19. Attribute Profiling Activities 5 min For each type of user determine 3. color three: pain points I find __ difficult I am frustrated by __ I would be able to do a be;er job if ___ was different ___ ruins my day fill out s7cky notes  one concept per note  brain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team 10 min cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)  you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering determine if anything is missing

20. Attribute Profiling Activities 5 min For each type of user determine 4. color four: design impera7ves what does the product have to do in order to make them happy and successful?   Be as specific as possible. fill out s7cky notes  one concept per note  brain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team 10 min cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)  you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering determine if anything is missing

21. Proﬁling Activities 5 min 5. for each user type, consolidate all aﬃnity diagrams onto an piece of paper folded into quadrants leave blank for now demographics & environment pain points responsibilities,   needs / wants,   motivations,   and goals design imperatives

22. Stage 3   Spectrum Proﬁling 1:15

23. Purpose How would you describe they types of people that use your so4ware?   As a team, what are the common, average, or dominant characteris<cs that are meaningful and make each type of users diﬀerent than the others? Describe these traits as a spectrum. texts infrequently texts often

24. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 10 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 1. choose 5 -‐ 10 aAributes you think are important or maAer more than others General infrequent taks short tasks nega<ve a@tude knows nothing about tech rookie frequent tasks long tasks posi<ve a<tude expert in tech pro

25. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 1. choose 5 -‐ 10 aAributes you think are important or maAer more than others Speciﬁc relies on research that’s provided avoids jargon with client reluctant to new technology few clients does own personal research uses jargon embraces new tech many clients small accounts large accounts less experience more experience focused on risk management focused on returns infrequent transac<ons frequent transac<ons nego<ates with client does what clients ask

26. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 5 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 2. share the 5 -‐ 10 aAributes each team member chose by puNng them up on the whiteboard 10 min 3. consolidate the numerous spectrums into one set of 5-‐10

27. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 5 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 4. each team member places a a uniquely colored dot on the spectrums where they think is most appropriate 5 min 5. con7nue for all 5-‐10 spectrums

28. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 15 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 6. stand back and no7ce paAerns (if Ame allows)

29. Spectrum Profiling Activities For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 6. stand back and no7ce paAerns (if Ame allows) If there is immediate consensus, minimal discussion will be required. If, however, there are outliers or a broad distribuAon of opinion, the team should be encouraged to discuss and debate those issues. Do pa;erns in the spectrum voAng reveal that perhaps what has been thought of as one persona should be split into two, or do you just not understand enough to come to an agreement on what this type of user is like ! for more info: h;p://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Persona+CreaAon Designing for the Digital Age: pages 247 -‐ 265

30. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 10 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 7. consolidate all ‘vo7ng’ dots into one dot per spectrum If there is immediate consensus, minimal discussion will be required. If, however, there are outliers or a broad distribuAon of opinion, the team should be encouraged to discuss and debate those issues. texts infrequently texts often texts infrequently texts often

31. Spectrum Proﬁling Activities 10 min For each type of user (or similar type of users -‐ i.e. in the same industry) 7. place the 5 -‐ 10 spectrums on the back of the persona sheet

32. Stage 4   Personiﬁcation 0:25

33. Purpose At this point you have a bunch of user types, but they are not yet a provisional persona. Personifying makes each user type more a more concrete and tangible example

34. Personification Activities 5 min For each type of user determine name descripAve label (i.e. impaAent shopper) strong quote in ‘their own words’ fill out s7cky notes  one concept per note  brain dump -‐ fill out sAckies unAl you can’t think of any more place s7cky notes on a wall or whiteboard stand back, no7ce paAerns and discuss as a team 10 min cluster notes into related groups (affinity diagram)  you may want to name clusters to clarify data and to make discussion easier over the course of discussion, clusters may merge or separate -‐ let the conversaAon naturally go where it needs to go unAl the team is happy with the clustering determine if anything is missing

35. Personification Activities 5 min 1.fill out the personifica7on aAributes on the front of your persona sheet in the top le5 quadrant name descriptive label strong quote

36. End of the Workshop what’s next

37. After the Workshop  Validate & Reﬁne

38. Validate & Refine Activities Have others (who weren’t in the persona workshop) review your provisional personas.   People could be Others in your company who frequently interact with end users Subject Ma;er Experts outside the company Actual users   Ask Them Are these the people you interact with Is anyone missing? Are these really all separate people? Have you captured “differences that make a difference”

39. Additional Sources http://www.infoq.com/presentations/pragmatic-personas! http://vimeo.com/70214000! http://wiki.ﬂuidproject.org/display/ﬂuid/Personas! http://zenexmachina.wordpress.com/tag/pragmatic-personas/! http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/03/the-dangers-of-design-by-user.php! http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/personas_empath.html! http://blogs.forrester.com/jonathan_browne/09-11-04-assumption_personas_handle_care! http://www.forrester.com/Assumption+Personas+Help+Overcome+Hurdles+To+Using+ResearchBased+Design +Personas/fulltext/-/E-RES53874! http://uxmag.com/articles/using-proto-personas-for-executive-alignment! http://learningspacetoolkit.org/needs-assessment/working-with-data/creating-personas/! http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/avoiding-half-baked-personas/! http://uxoslo.com/2013/10/14/proto-personas/! http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/07/personas_and_twinkies! http://boxesandarrows.com/building-a-data-backed-persona/! http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/ad_hoc_personas/! http://www.thingsontop.com/remixing-power-adhoc-personas-1020.html