Presentation given at the Frontend Conference in Zurich by Nellie LeMonier on September 6th, 2012

1. The Un-researched
Persona
Nellie LeMonier
Perforce Software
UX Design

2. Nellie LeMonier
UX research & design at Perforce Software
Alameda, California

3. What is User Experience
(UX)?

4. UX or UI

5. Engineering & UX

6. Why this talk?
Research is important…
don’t make a product
without it.

7. Origins of Personas
Customer Prints: by Angus Jenkinson
for Customer Segmentation /
Marketing (~1993)
Personas: Alan Cooper for Software
Development (~1995)

8. Why Personas?
The Benefits
• Shared understanding
• Coherent story
• Reduce conjecture
• Build empathy
• Define the “right” requirement
• $$$ Save Development Effort

9. What is a Persona?
• Personification of the roles
• Role, professional background
• Identity and personality
• Technical expertise
• Goals & cares

10. An Example

13. Business Domain
• Personas are specific
• Don’t believe in library of personas
• Define ecosystem

14. When are Personas Created?
• Early
• Before you start
• As you go

15. How are Personas created?
Hypothesis
Stakeholder
Research
Review
Refine
Analysis
Hypothesis

16. Research is important…
don’t make a product
without it.

17. Research

18. Research

19. How are Personas Researched?
• Contextual inquiry / User observation
• Surveys
• Phone interviews
• Market research
• Domain research

20. Without research…
What could possibly go
wrong?

21. Case Study:
Content Management
System (CMS)
• Developers came up with the personas
• No research was done to create these

22. CMS Case Study: Personas without research
Larry Moe Curly
End User Sys Admin Content Manager
The dev team made these up

23. What was RIGHT with Larry,
Moe and Curly?
• Comic relief
• United the team
• Gave them a common conversation
• Tasks for personas were defined

24. What was WRONG with Larry,
Moe and Curly ?
• No motivating factors defined
• No domain expertise defined
• Did not reduce conjecture
• Curly couldn’t type

25. CMS Personas – Take 2
1. Larry, Moe and Curly were retired (RIP)
2. Research domain: internal interviews (1 day)
3. Research specific roles through interviews (1 week)
4. Synthesize new Personas (1 week)

26. CMS Personas – Take 2
Aaron Maya Ed
Front End Developer Content Editor Site Administrator

27. Take 2
Conclusions
1. Motivations are
clear
2. Tasks are defined
3. Expertise known
4. Unifies product
team

28. What was WRONG (PART 2)
with Larry, Moe and Curly ?
• 1 of the users didn’t exist
• 1 marketing persona wasn’t defined
(How to sell to these guys?)
• No consensus with stakeholders

29. Case Study:
Bridge to Competitive
Product (FUSION)
• Developer & UX came up with Personas
• Research done into domain

30. Case Study: Fusion
Background
• Requirements driven by market need
• Pressure from lost sales
• Internal users of competition
• Domain was somewhat known

31. Case Study: Fusion
Step 1: Persona Hypothesis
Evan Greg
System Administrator Git Developer
Vera Raina Tom
P4V Developer Release Engineer Tech Lead

32. Case Study: Fusion
Step 2: Research
• Research Plan with Goals
• Survey via Twitter, Forums, and Sales Team
• Phone Interviews
• Site Visits
• Remote Screen Sharing

33. Case Study: Fusion
Step 2.5 Share Research
Doing research is cool, but sharing it
is even cooler…

34. Mental Model
Explanation of someone’s thought process
on how something works
GOAL MESSAGE EXPECTATION
USER

35. “Paul”

36. About “Paul”
• Huge Perforce fan boy
& early Perforce Admin
• Becoming a Git/GitHub fan
boy
• 15 years dev management

37. Peter: Using GitHub
News feed

38. Peter: Using GitHub
Review changes of other developers

39. Peter: Using GitHub
Review changes of other developers

40. Peter: Using GitHub
Review changes of other developers

41. Peter: Using GitHub
Commenting on changes

42. Peter: Using GitHub
Commenting on changes

43. Peter: Using Perforce
• Review Daemon - > P4Web
• Code review tool - > set up, not
cohesive experience
• P4V -> history view more clicks to
visually diff

44. Peter: Using SourceTree

45. Why are users choosing
these tools?
• Align with mental model of needs
• Effectiveness of access
• Remove barrier to information
• Make development more effective
• Effective development means making
more awesome software faster

46. Case Study: Fusion
Step 3: Analysis
• Hypothesis is a little wrong
• Secondary persona is really primary
• Primary persona is really secondary
• Other requirements and influencers

47. Case Study: Fusion
Step 4: Refine Hypothesis
Tom
Evan
Tech Lead
System Administrator
Greg
Git Developer

48. Case Study: Fusion
Step 5: Stakeholder Review

49. Perforce Git Fusion
Product Personas
49

50. Product Persona
Tom
Release Engineering Manager
“The devil is in the details”
•Extensive experience delivering solutions that use diverse
technologies
•Adept at meeting strict deadlines
•Wants to be the hero, failure is not an option
Who he is:
Profession: Director of Release Engineering
Education: Masters in Computer Engineering, UC Berkeley, 2001
Age: 38
Home Life: Married with 3 children. Volunteers with his church 2 weekends a month.
Personality: Dynamic leader who loves thinking on a large scale.
Technical expertise:
Has deep understanding in development and configuration processes and strategies. Expert in Gerrit, Git,
ClearQuest, OracleDB, and mySQL which he’s used to create and automate the ALM processes and his company.
Goals:
•Allow users to re-use code.
•Ensure that everything is tested by automation.
•Bugs can easily be traced and fixed.
•Configure new modules.
•Organize who has access to what.
•Ensure users can easily follow a workflow strategy.
•Understand how product dependencies work.
•Provide solution that scales to 700 users.

51. Product Persona
Evan
Enterprise Version Management System Administrator
“My job is to protect my company’s crown jewels”
•Extensive experience in development and source control
•First adopter of new technology
•The security, reliability and performance of the site are his first priorities
Who he is:
Profession: System Admin in IT Department
Education: BS Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois, 1980
Age: 54
Home Life: Single. Rides motorcycles in his spare time. Into gaming.
Personality: Not afraid of new technology, likes a challenge and solving problems but also appreciates
products that just work as their supposed to.
Technical expertise:
Has experience administrating Perforce, ClearCase, and SVN. Also has experience coding in Perl and Python.
Goals:
•Easily set up and configure a Git Fusion server.
•Create and manage user access to Perforce, GF and Gerritt.
•Ensure that systems are backed up, secure, auditable, and highly available.
•Full access, when he needs it, to all systems he maintains.
•Enforce SOX compliance requirements through systems he maintains.
What he cares about:
•Wants Perforce up and running, responsive with no down or slow time. Downtime means complaints and
idle employees. 51

52. Case Study: Fusion
Research Benefits
• Business domain more defined
• Requirements for other products
• Persona accuracy
• Strengthen relationships with users
• Build the product customers want to buy

53. Survey to UX Practitioners

54. How Many Projects Used Personas?

55. How Much Do You Know About
the Business Domain?

56. Why Don’t You Take The
Time to Research?
Enough known
Someone else
did the research
Research time
not important
Research important,
no time

57. Other Reasons For
No Research:
• Lack of interest from stakeholders
• Lack of budget for any research
• Out of scope
• Organization does not value research
• Does not believe there are changes to
the domain, research was done years
ago

58. How Long Did You Spend Researching
Personas?

59. Share the Personas
• Stakeholders – Marketing / Sales
• Product Management
• Product Team
• Keep the Personas Alive

60. Why Personas?
The Benefits
• Shared understanding
• Coherent story
• Reduce conjecture
• Build empathy
• Define the “right” requirement
• $$$ Save development effort

61. The (OTHER) Benefits
of Research
• Build trust with your users
• Build a relationship
• Usability testers ready
• Expand stakeholders
• Learn of “Other” opportunities
• Make MORE $$$
• Make a better product

62. Thank you for listening.
Questions?
Nellie LeMonier
Twitter: @NellieLeMonier
or @gmail