This session walks through the concept of user roles as an alternative to personas as a means to generate and disseminate user insights for product development teams. We will describe the tools and methods used to create a research database organized by user roles, along with examples and short exercises to help attendees think through user roles within their own context. By the end of the session, attendees should be aware of tools and approaches for: Organizing user research information in a database Disseminating user role information to product and design teams Managing a user roles database as part of a long term UX Research program If you’re ready to ditch personas but don’t know how, this session is for you!

1. Get Over Personas
Swipe Right on User Roles

2. Tiffany Kieboom
Lead, UX Research @
Benevity
Greg Hallihan
Principal Consultant @
Human Insights

3. Presentation Outline
We’ll Talk About
1. What are User Roles
a. Definition and comparison to persona
2. How to Build out User Roles
a. Organizing user data in a relational database
b. Database modeling and data analysis
3. Managing User Roles within a research ops process
a. Sharing user insights with product teams through
User Roles
b. Communicating User Roles throughout the
organization

4. Demo User Roles Database

6. The Origin of
User Roles

7. We need Personas
We can build personas!

8. Use existing research to
build them!
There’s a fair bit of
research here!

9. We don’t want any fluffy
stuff!
But Keanu…

10. Make sure they align with
our product strategy!
What do you mean by
align…?

11. Get to it!
I don’t think we’re
building Personas any
more…

12. Why a User Role?
We wanted a way to:
1. Organize all user insights in one place
2. Make it easy for cross-functional teams
and departments to access user insights
3. Reduce the effort of managing and scaling
up a UX Research program

13. What is a User Role?
A User Role is an aggregation of user data, organized
around a segment of common product or service
interactions

14. What is a User Role?
A User Role is an aggregation of user data, organized
around a segment of common product or service
interactions
Aggregation of User Data: User data can be any source
of information which pertains to the user of a product or
service.
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15. What is a User Role?
A User Role is an aggregation of user data, organized
around a segment of common product or service
interactions
Segment of Common User Interactions: Segments
reflect logical groupings of individual users into
categories reflecting their experience
Interactions revolve around
supporting other employees
(B2B) use the product.
Admin
Interactions revolve around
using the product to support
the requirements of their job.
Employee
Interactions revolve around
using the product to get ‘value’
from the company.
Customer

16. Why a User Role?
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Interactions
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Research
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Admin
By aggregating data around a common interaction point,
the User Role scales and is easier to manage as new
insights come in or organizational priorities change.
By using product or service interactions as the way to
segment the data, roles can be defined in a way that is
user-centric and relevant across the organization.

17. U
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User
Data
User
Data
User
Data
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User
Role

18. Are User Roles Different
than Personas?

19. Yes…

20. Best Practice vs. Reality
Personas
The ‘best’ personas may be data driven, realistic
representations that build empathy and inform
decision-making, and exist as scalable assets
BUT
Too often they’re 1 page PDFs that provide a generalized
representation a fictional user with limited data
{ ADJECTIVE + FIRST NAME}

21. Interaction Design . Org
Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research
to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or
brand in a similar way. Creating personas will help you understand your users’ needs,
experiences, behaviors and goals. Creating personas can help you step out of
yourself. It can help you recognize that different people have different needs and
expectations, and it can also help you identify with the user you’re designing for.
Personas make the design task at hand less complex, they guide your ideation
processes, and they can help you to achieve the goal of creating a good user
experience for your target user group.

22. Usability . GOV
The purpose of personas is to create reliable and
realistic representations of your key audience
segments for reference. These representations
should be based on qualitative and some
quantitative user research and web analytics.

23. UX Design Institute
A UX persona is a fictional character which
represents your target users. Personas are an
extremely valuable UX tool, allowing you to better
understand your target audience and make design
decisions accordingly.

24. March Branding . Com
User personas are important in helping you design
your product to meet the needs of your users. They
are fictitious characters used to represent a real
target audience. They are used to summarise
and communicate research about that specific
audience in a succinct and digestible way.

25. NNGroup . Com
Proto personas, meant to quickly align the team’s
existing assumptions about who their users are, but
not based on (new) research
Qualitative personas, based on small-sample
qualitative research, such as interviews, usability
tests, or field studies
Statistical personas, where initial qualitative research
informs a survey instrument that is used to gather a
large sample size, and the personas emerge from
statistical analysis

26. Source: Adobe via https://www.adobe.com/express/create/user-persona

27. By Reboot and the Wikimedia Foundation - Created by Reboot and the Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50471872

29. Personas User Roles
Fictional Archetypes Functional Roles
1 User
Representation
2
Evidence Base
Data-Driven
(Best Practice)
Data-Driven
(Requirement)
3 Design Process
Integration
Early Stage & Edge Cases
Entire Product Design Life
Cycle
5
UXR Effort Lower Higher
6
Purpose
Empathy Driven User Centred
Design
Data Driven User Centred
Design
4 Information
Management
1-2 Page PDFs Relational Database

30. Personas User Roles Considerations
● User roles are defined based on ‘segments’ of
product interactions and functionality, whereas
personas are represented as archetypal
individuals
1 Functional User
Representation
● You should be using actual data from actual
users to build personas or user roles. That’s just
good UXR.
2 Evidence /
Research Based
● Personas may be useful early on in the design
process, BUT User Roles support decision
making across the product design life cycle
3 Used Across the
Design Life Cycle
● Building out the User Role requires more time,
effort and research skills (in our experience)
than Personas
5
Low UXR Effort
● Both Personas and User Roles can be used to
build empathy with design and product teams
by promoting a better understanding of the
people who use the product or service
6
Builds Empathy
● Personas essentially live in 1-2 page documents,
whereas User Roles live in a relational database
4 Scalable Data
Management

31. Structured to be Different
User Roles
The STRUCTURE prevents user roles from becoming personas,
and keeps the fluff and fiction out
● Built around the user from a functional perspective
● Requires structured data pertaining to that role
● Live in a relational database
U
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User
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User
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User
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32. The User Role
Database

33. The User Role
Database
Tables: Groupings of related user data
Records: An individual listing of data (the Row)
Fields: Specific types of information pertaining
to records (Columns)

34. The User Role
Database
Tables: Groupings of related user data
● (e.g., User Roles, Pain Points, Research
Resources)
Records: An individual listing of data (the Row)
● (e.g., Admin User, technical errors, Jan 2022 User
Interviews)
Fields: Specific types of information pertaining
to records (Columns)
● (e.g., Description, Theme, Data Type)

35. The User Role
Database
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User
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User
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User
Data
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36. Building the
User Role

37. 1 2 3 4
Data Inventory
Figure out what
information you have
Data Synthesis
Bring your data together
in a meaningful way
Data Organization
Model the relationships
between your data
Iteration & Refinement
Make it work for your team,
with their input
Development Process
It’s more iterative and frustrating than presented here

38. Demo User Roles Database

39. Data
Inventory What Data Do You Have?
What data sources and types of data will you be able to
incorporate into the User Role now and soon?
1

40. Data
Inventory
What data sources and types of data will you be able to
incorporate into the User Role now and soon?
● Web Analytics
○ Bounce rates, path analyses
● UX Metrics
○ SUS, Success Rates
● User Interviews
○ User Feedback, Pain Points
● Inspections / Reviews
○ Heuristic Evaluation, Accessibility Audits
What Data Do You Have?
1

41. Data
Inventory
What data sources and types of data will you be able to
incorporate into the User Role now and soon?
● Market Research
○ Geographic segments, product Reviews
● Product
○ Current vs. future capabilities, User Acceptance Tests
● Competitive Research
○ Product Reviews
● CSR Feedback
○ Customer complaints and support requests
What Data Do You Have?
1

42. Example Inventory

43. Example Inventory

44. Data
Inventory
● Sharing and Permissions
○ (e.g., expiring share links, license costs, security
requirements)
● Duplication and Derivatives
○ (e.g., Minor modifications represented as wholly new
reports)
Data Management Considerations…
1

45. How can you organize all these disparate sources of
information about the user into something cohesive?
Data
Organization How is Your Data Related?
2

46. Data
Organization How is Your Data Related?
How can you organize all these disparate sources of
information about the user into something cohesive?
● Identify common elements across research assets
○ Pain Points, Tasks/Goals, Product Functionality
● Organize those elements around the User Roles
based on how your team makes decisions
○ This requires some analysis
2
*Database organization is similar to “database modelling” and
doing it well reduces duplication of information and produces
meaningful data relationships.

47. Example Structure

48. Example Structure

49. Example Structure

50. Data Synthesis
How Will You Bring Data Together?
What’s the best approach to make the data accessible for
different teams and different purposes?
3

51. Data Synthesis
How Will You Bring Data Together?
What’s the best approach to make the data accessible for
different teams and different purposes?
● ‘Translate’ all your data from its original source into
a your database
○ This requires some analysis
● ‘Tag’ or link data to provide additional structure
○ Start creating new linkages between data and identifying
relevant themes
○ This process is iterative
3

52. Content Analysis Example
Comment From Client Interview
"I think the data is probably my biggest pain point. I just have a hard time trusting the
data, to answer questions on the fly. When an executive want an answer right away, I
want to give them one, but it takes a couple days to get that answer and I find the
reporting tool too complex to get it myself."

53. Content Analysis Example
Comment From Client Interview
"I think the data is probably my biggest pain point. I just have a hard time trusting the
data, to answer questions on the fly. When an executive want an answer right away, I
want to give them one, but it takes a couple days to get that answer and I find the
reporting tool too complex to get it myself."
User Role
{Role Name}
JTBD
{Reporting}
Pain Point
{Data Management}
Theme
{Trust and Reliability}
Product
{Product Name}

54. Content Analysis Example
Comment From Client Interview
"I think the data is probably my biggest pain point. I just have a hard time trusting the
data, to answer questions on the fly. When an executive want an answer right away, I
want to give them one, but it takes a couple days to get that answer and I find the
reporting tool too complex to get it myself."
User Role
{Role Name}
JTBD
{Reporting}
Pain Point
{Data Management}
Theme
{Trust and Reliability}
Product
{Product Name}
The ‘appropriateness’ of the analysis categories or
themes are contextually dependent. We
iteratively developed them over time.

55. An Analysis Aside Identifying / Extracting Themes:
● Categories are derived by through inductive
reasoning while reviewing the raw data
● Categories are defined a priori based on theory
or subject matter expertise, which guides the
data analysis
● Specific semantic content / keywords are
quantified and meaning is derived from the
prevalence of that quantified content
Generic Process
1. Prep the data for analysis
2. Define the ‘unit’ of analysis
3. Develop a coding scheme
4. Test the coding scheme
5. Code the data
6. Assess consistency
7. Draw conclusions
3
https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~yanz/Content_analysis.pdf

56. Data Synthesis
Considerations for Data Synthesis
● Reports vs. Raw Data
○ Reports summarize existing insights
○ Raw data is a source of additional insight
● Data Types / Sources
○ PDFs, Video Files, Spreadsheets
○ Links to other product team tools (e.g., JIRA boards)
3

57. Iteration and
Refinement What does your team think?
What refinements and outputs will provide the most
value for the people that will be using the User Role?
4

58. Iteration and
Refinement What does your team think?
What refinements and outputs will provide the most
value for the people that will be using the User Role?
● Database access
○ (Direct access, filtered views, query support)
● Additional analyses
○ Identification of new themes / tags
● Additional Outputs
○ People who don’t like databases still need something…
4

59. Example Feedback and Design

60. Example Feedback and Design
What do you think?
I don’t want to
navigate the
database…

61. Example Feedback and Design

62. Example Feedback and Design
What about this?
A Persona would be
better…

63. Example Feedback and Design

64. Example Feedback and Design

65. Example Feedback and Design
What about this?!
This I like… this I
can use!

66. 1 2 3 4
Data Inventory
Figure out what
information you have
Data Synthesis
Bring your data together in a
meaningful way
Data Organization
Model the relationships
between your data
Iteration & Refinement
Make it work for your
team, with their input
Development Process
It’s more iterative and frustrating than presented here

67. Managing
User Roles

68. Communicating User Roles
It’s a new concept that has to be
disseminated across the
organization. The best way to do it
depends on on the organization and
the people.
Building a Process
The database provides an effective
way to develop a bunch of different
tools to support user-centred design.
Extracting Insights
From a UXR perspective, having all
your data in one place is a great
analysis tool for research ops, and
for responding to product team
queries.
Adding New Data
As new user research is conducted,
or new insights become available,
that’s new data to be integrated
with the User Role Database.
Ongoing Management Activities
User
Role

69. Communicating
User Roles Build a Communication Strategy
● When does the strategy have to accommodate
stakeholder variability?
○ Different use cases (e.g., onboarding new team members
vs. product manager self-serve queries)
● When does the strategy take advantage of
stakeholder consistency?
○ Common communication platforms (e.g., Confluence)

70. Communicating
User Roles Some Communication ‘Options’
● Corporate Wiki or Intranet Pages
○ Create an access point for the entire organization
○ Provide a place for feedback, questions and contact
● Tutorial or FAQ Videos
○ An easy intro to the User Roles and preempts having the
same conversations repeatedly
● Slack Channels
○ Sharing use cases and insights
● User Role Dashboards
○ Leveraging interactive interfaces to surface data and
respond to queries

71. Extracting
Insights Answer New Questions
● Having everything in one place lets you perform
unique analyses
○ Identifying gaps in user knowledge / research to plan
future research activities or evaluate experience risks
● Having everything in one place lets you answer
questions quickly
○ Answering product team questions (or better yet directing
them to the answer their own)

72. Example Visual Analysis
Lots of Research
Not Lots of Research

73. Adding New
Data Change Happens (Hopefully)
● Incorporate changes to the product
○ E.g., pain points may be resolved through feature
enhancements
● Incorporate new research
○ E.g., new user interviews will provide more information for
existing user roles
● Incorporate new organizational data
○ E.g., customer reviews or CSR feedback becomes available
for integration

74. Building a
Process Planning for the Future
● Build a process around managing the database and
role
○ Whose ‘job’ is it - the process should be owned by someone
○ Management can be collaborative across teams
○ Scalability requires communication around the availability
of new, and irrelevance of existing, information

75. Questions?
Tiff Greg
tiffany.kieboom@benevity.com greg.hallihan@humaninsights.ca

76. Does the Tech
Matter
We haven’t tried
anything anything
else but what else is
out there?
?
Are we being
Semantic
Are we just adding a
RDB to data-driven
personas?
?
Will it really
scale
Will it work as an
organization
evolves?
?
Do we need a
Database
Could you do this
with something
else?
?
Does it always
Work
Are there products /
services / teams
were this doesn’t
make sense?
?
Things We’ve Asked Ourselves

77. Structure
Matters More
Just need to
centralize the data
and create
meaningful
relationships.
No
New Approach
User Roles
represent a more
integrated and
holistic approach to
surfacing user data.
No
Depends on the
Team
The UXR team has
to manage it and
continue to adapt it
as the organization
changes.
Maybe
It’s the Role’s
Home
The User Role lives
in the database and
without it you’re
only halfway there.
Yes
Nothing’s Perfect
May be more effort
than it’s worth with
limited data or
engagement. Might
be some roles that
don’t segment well.
So Far
Does the Tech
Matter
We haven’t tried
anything anything
else but what else is
out there?
?
Are we being
Semantic
Are we just adding a
RDB to data-driven
personas?
?
Will it really
scale
Will it work as an
organization
evolves?
?
Do we need a
Database
Could you do this
with something
else?
?
Does it always
Work
Are there products /
services / teams
were this doesn’t
make sense?
?
Things We’ve Asked Ourselves

78. Tools to build out the
relational database and link all
your insights.
Database
Management
● Airtable
● MS Access
● Other?
Tools to help you map and
organize all your information
and relationships before you
build the database
Whiteboards
● MIRO
● LucidSpark
● Other?
Tools to centralize the
location of all your linked
assets (e.g., videos) and
research (e.g., reports and
data)
File
Management
● Box
● One Drive
● Other?
Tools to help you disseminate
the User Role Database
throughout the organization
Comms
Platforms
● Confluence
● Slack
● Others?
Tools