Design with Personas: A Lean Approach

DESIGN
WITH
PERSONAS
A LEAN
APPROACH
Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali

NIGHT.EU
UX Redirector Advisor

THE PRODUCT/USER
DISCONNECTION

The product shadow
DISCONNECTION 1

A business at its core is a
person helping another person.

To make that help scale
we added layers: software.

That same software casts
a shadow hiding the users.

Slowly, naturally, we consider
the software as the end goal.

Design
for Functions
Design
for Humans

The elastic user
DISCONNECTION 2

Implicit
users
Explicit
users

“
”Alan Cooper
The best way to successfully accommodate
a variety of users is to design for specific
types of individu...

1
How
do we keep
the user in focus?
2
How
do we keep
the team aligned?

“
”
If I’d asked people what they wanted,
they’d have asked for a faster horse.
Attributed to
Henry Ford

ALSO REFERRED AS:
The “I have no clue” quote

faster horse
?
why
+
INTERNET
DELIVERIES
AIRPLANES
NEWSPAPERS
LUNA PARKS
=
ETC…

“
”Alan Cooper
Personas provide us with a precise way of
thinking and communicating about how
users behave, how they t...

THE EXTENDED JOURNEY
THE CONTEXT BEYOND YOUR SERVICE
Your Service
Journey

Personas are
not a deliverable
(but one of the steps is a deliverable)

Consider personas
as data synthesis
(but yeah, personas are models)

Research
Keep
Researching
Personas Use

DATA
COLLECTION
DATA
CLUSTERING
PERSONAS
SHAPING
PERSONAS
WEIGHTS

USE PERSONAS TO
Reference Data

USE PERSONAS TO
Prioritize & Plan

USE PERSONAS TO
Do Ticket Triage

R1 SPRINT
4 weeks activity
Plan
Interviews
Surveys
Data Review
Synthesis
Personas

TOOLS USED
Polldaddy
Google Docs
+ your internal collaboration tools

interviews
survey
new data
data since 2011

Custom Shortcode Plugin
[persona Santiago]

POSTS CATEGORIES
Atomized
data points
Matching
the personas
PAGES
One for
each persona

CATEGORIES
Matching
the personas
=
Deborah Deborah
PERSONA CATEGORY

PAGES
One for
each persona
Photo
Name
Weight %
Introduction paragraph
Goals
Pain points
Quote
Atomized Data

Display Posts Shortcode Plugin
[display-posts category="deborah" posts_per_page="-1"]
wordpress.org/plugins/display-post...

Atom of Data
Atom of Data
Atom of Data
Atom of Data
Atom of Data
Home
Persona 1 Persona 2 Persona 3

With every new research you
atomize and link to persona.

“
” Bruno Munari
To complicate is easy, to simplify is hard.
To complicate, just add,
everyone is able to complicate. ...

Design with Personas: A Lean Approach

Davide 'Folletto' Casali