The document discusses the concept of personas in product development, emphasizing their importance in understanding and empathizing with users for creating more user-centric products. It outlines the steps for creating and using personas, provides a practical example related to the development of an ERP system in Latvia, and highlights the benefits of integrating personas into the design process. Additionally, it mentions the pros and challenges of using personas, as well as studying literature on the topic.

1. Personas that change the
way you think
Gundega Lazdāne CBAP, Business analysis team lead at FMS, Latvia
Armands Ķirītis, Msc. Comp, Product owner at FMS, Latvia

2. Agenda
• Who are persons
• Who are Personas
• How to create Personas
• How to use Personas
• A practical example by Armands Ķirītis

3. Gundega Lazdāne, CBAP
• Ing. Sc. Masters degree
• 15 years in Business Analysis
• BA team lead at FMS
• President of Latvia IIBA® chapter

4. Armands Ķirītis
• Masters degree in Computer
Science – Information Systems
• 6+ years experience as a
Business Analyst
• Product owner at FMS

5. • One of the largest software companies in
Latvia complying ISO 9001:2009
• ERP system Horizon, System integration, BI
• R&D laboratory

6. Who are persons?
• Linda Miller
• 29 years old
• Married, has no children
• Loves to travel
• Works as accountant
• Bill Johnson
• 58 years old
• Married, has 2 children
and 6 grandchildren
• Loves to play poker
• Works as accountant

7. Who are persons?
• Actor
• Accountant

8. Who are we developing to?
• Some groups of people who have similar set
of tasks

9. Who do we understand better?
Accountants in
general
Real people who
have a job as
accountant

10. Who do we understand better?
Accountants in
general
Real people who
have a job as an
accountant
Why then do we make products
for abstract user groups?
Let’s make products for
real persons

11. Challenge:
• All people aren’t similar – if we create a
product based on requirements of a few
users, others won’t like it
Solution:
• Personas – real people alike archetypes that
are based on real-world data about user
groups

12. About Personas
“The inmates are running the asylum”,
1998
Alan Cooper

13. Who are Personas?
• Personas look like real persons
• Personas are not real persons
• Personas are created based on motivation
and behavior of real people
• Personas are created using data collected
from real people by observing and exploring

14. Personas as well as persons have
• Photo
• Biography
• Social situation
• Dreams and personal aims
… this creates empathy.
Name
Demographic
information
Motivation
Aims
Behavior

15. Personas as well as persons have
• Photo
• Biography
• Social situation
• Dreams and personal aims
… this creates empathy.
Name
Demographic
information
Motivation
Aims
Behavior
Empathy is the ability to
understand and share
another person’s feelings

16. 4 steps creating Persona
1. Identify and fill atributes
2. Focus on goals not activities
3. Identify behavior patterns
4. Expand description

17. Step 1: Identify and fill attributes
Activities Attitude Aptitude
Motivation Skills

18. Step 2: Focus on goals not features

19. Step 3: Identify behavior patterns

20. Step 4: Expand description

21. How to use Personas
• To communicate requirements in a team
• To specify product behavior
• To evaluate interfaces
• For marketing purposes

22. The Horizon WEB 2.0
Persona based improvement

23. • The most popular ERP system in Latvia
– About 30% of the market,
– About 80% of the public sector
• Desktop application
• 1500 clients (public and private sector)
• More than 20 years of development

24. Horizon WEB
• WEB counterpart of the Horizon system
• Self-service for employees
• Some specific usages for operators covered

25. History of Horizon WEB
• Was developed to make some functions
more accessible via WEB interface
• The functionality is expanded over time

26. The problem
• 20+ years of experience with ERP that is
meant for advanced users
• Implementing the WEB product in similar
style and interface as desktop Horizon
• Users aren’t always happy with the UI/UX of
the system as it is more document oriented
than user oriented

27. The job to do
• Find a method that allows us to transform
the system from document-focused to user-
focused
• Utilize that method
• Improve the UX by remaking the product

28. The preparation
• Goals
• Planning
• Generating ideas
• Kick-off
• Tasks
• Methods

29. The Personas – why?
• Several authors recommend this method as
very user-centric, for example, Scott
Klemmer, Marty Cagan
• Good feedback from practitioners

30. Our approach
• We have a lot of information about our
users:
– Regular seminars and meetings
– Client requests online
– Other ways to get feedback
• This information: the basis for creating
Personas
• Additional interviews for extra info and
observation

31. Creating a list of behavioral variables
Activities
• Office based or mobile
• Percentage of activities in product domain
• Few or many parallel tasks
Attitudes
• Attitude towards information systems
• Attitude towards electronic devices
Aptitudes
• Education level
• Additional courses taken
Motivations
• Salary level
• Enthusiastic about work
• Workload
Skills
• Computer user skills
• Communication skills

32. The job roles
• Choosing the relevant job roles that we build
Horizon WEB for (and the ones we don’t
build for)
CEO Nurse
HR
manager
Clerk

33. Continuing the work
• Process information about the subjects –
chosen from various job roles
• Investigating the variable values for those
roles
• Creating behavioral patterns for the roles

34. Synthesizing characteristics and goals
• Creating a table containing our behavioral
patterns and bullet points of the
characteristics and goals

35. Checking for redundancy and
completeness
• As the roles were planned in order to be
distinct, we didn’t find any redundancy
• By additional interviews found some roles
missing
• Added the information about the missing
roles and their behavioral patterns

36. Expanding description of attributes
• Adding a description about the person, a
narrative
• Still containing the bullet points for
completeness – a combination of both
narration and structure
• A photo found in the Internet that describes
the person

37. Assigning the persona types
• Positive personas: primary, secondary,
supplemental
• Negative personas

38. The problem of scope
• We determined 2 primary personas
• Split the scope in two separate functional
areas
Horizon
WEB
Self service
system
Operator’s
station

39. Reassigning the persona types
• Splitting the persona types to both self-
service and operator’s station
• Several personas are excluded from the
scope of operator’s stations as they do not
use this functionality
• Some personas are added as negative
persons for the self-service area as they do
not fit the user we’re building the self-
service system for

40. Expanded: John the seller
• One of the described Personas: John the
seller

41. The requirements
• Writing context scenarios for the primary
and some of the secondary personas
• Their typical workday involving the usage of
Horizon WEB
• Defining the requirements for improvements

42. The implementation
• The Horizon WEB 2.0
– New focus – the user
– New technology (WEB forms --> MVC)
• The system is modular: implementing the
changes in one module at a time

43. The benefits
• We had a set of characteristics for the
people we build the product for
• Terminology change: we develop for the
personas who have names (empathy)
• The priorities of requirements are defined
by the persona they’re derived from

44. The benefits
• User testing: we can do user testing from
the viewpoint of a persona without involving
real users at first
• Personas can also be used for creating
marketing material

45. Our results
• The first round changes in first specific
module: Document Circulation are already
implemented and delivered to our clients
• We did:
– User testing
– Surveys
– Analysis of usage logs

46. Before… Circulation of a vacation request

47. After the remake

48. Further perspective
• Remaking other modules in the same way
• The personas are reusable for future
projects thus making them a good tool for
long term product development

49. Pros and challenges
• Better understanding of end users
• The personas can be used as a
communication tool in the team
• The method brings results
• More analysis has to be done at first
• The thinking and development principles
have to be changed

50. Reading & learning suggestions
• Alan Cooper: About Face 3,
http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111
• Tamara Adlin, John Pruitt: The Essential
Persona Lifecycle
http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Persona-Lifecycle-Building/dp/0123814189
• Chris Nodder, Lynda.com course “UX Design
Techniques: Creating Personas”
http://www.lynda.com/Web-User-Experience-tutorials/UX-Design-Techniques-Creating-Personas/144082-2.html
• Scott Klemmer: Human-Computer
Interaction, course in Coursera, started on
30.06.2014.,
https://www.coursera.org/course/hciucsd

51. Thank you for your attention