How do you get everybody in your team to understand who is using your product — especially if you're not 100% certain yourself? You get out of the building and talk to your customers, but how do you communicate what you've learned when you get back? Persona are research-based examples of the people who use your product. They help teams understand customers and deliver the features that they really need. However persona have traditionally been produced by specialist researchers in up-front research phases that don’t fit in well with agile and lean product development. This talk shows you how to get the whole team involved in user research. You’ll work through an example scenario showing you how to learn about your customers by building persona incrementally. You'll experience how to get rapid alignment on your customer within the team, how to refine customer models over time, and how this lets you work with persona in a changing marketplace. Helping the whole team gain customer empathy and generate new product ideas. You'll come away with practical techniques for integrating persona with agile & lean approaches to product strategy and development.

1. Adrian Howard (@adrianh)
Iterative Persona
#agileotb 2016
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sketchy_(443136151).jpg

2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cat_on_laptop_-_Just_Browsing.jpg

3. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mr._Maji,_a_long-haired_orange_cat_with_white_muzzle.jpg

4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/2top/8507775261/

5. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hello_Kitty-Bremen.jpg

6. https://www.flickr.com/photos/hansthijs/3586762234/

7. http://memegenerator.net/instance/54376410

8. Persona

9. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ltangelini/4683559792/

10. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Thinker_Musee_Rodin.jpg
Analysis
& Synthesis

11. http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-personas

13. https://www.flickr.com/photos/hansthijs/3586762234/

14. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rows_of_Bookshelves.jpg

15. https://www.flickr.com/photos/baltasar89/15668939281

16. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006BVW09G/

17. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ykjc9/4143179870/

18. Problem?

19. Agile
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Extreme_Programming.svg
XP + SCRUM + DSDM + ASD + Crystal + FDD + Pragmatic + etc.

20. Lean Startup
Customer Development + Agile + Lean
buildlearn
measure
productdata
ideas

21. Lean UX
Lean Startup + UX + Design Thinking
makethink
check

22. Whatever ™
You know, for kids!
actionaction
action
thingthing
thing
mighty
circle
o’feedback

23. Persona problems…
• Presented as truth
• Large up-front investment of time, money & people
• Need a fairly good grasp of our market
• Tends to result in set-and-forget persona
• Introducing products changes the world

24. http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/01/24/personas-are-not-a-document/
Personas are to Persona
Descriptions as Vacations are to
Souvenir Picture Albums
— Jared Spool

25. https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163462230/
Sam Bossman,
VP of Sales

26. https://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/3876631361/
Pat Minion,
Sam’s PA

27. Iterative Persona

28. 1. Define

30. http://www.slideshare.net/clevergirl/luxr-oneday-workshop/73

32. From Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez

33. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rbowen/1148435913

34. Apply the truthiness scale…

36. Made up sh*t True

37. Made up sh*t True

38. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cat_skeleton_-Booth_Museum,_Brighton_and_Hove,_East_Sussex,_England-20Oct2011.jpg

39. 2. Refine

40. Add structure…

41. Made up sh*t True

42. TrueStrongWeakGuess

43. Add rules…

44. TrueStrongWeakGuess

45. TrueStrongWeakGuess

46. TrueStrongWeakGuess

47. TrueStrongWeakGuess

48. TrueStrongWeakGuess

49. bit.ly/indipersona

50. http://memegenerator.net/instance2/4853223

52. https://twitter.com/guspower/status/448487628107575296/photo/1

53. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Fat_Red_Cat.jpg

54. 3. Realign

55. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:International_tidyman.svg

56. http://pixabay.com/en/viewpoint-gazebo-lookout-point-99199/

57. http://pixabay.com/en/sign-signs-traffic-road-street-39400/

58. http://pixabay.com/en/traffic-sign-road-sign-shield-6664/

59. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

60. Communicates risk and
confidence, not truth

61. Lets you get people started
quickly & cheaply

62. Whole team approach
eases adoption

63. Embraces change

64. Organisation still has to buy in

65. Folk forget refine & realign

66. http://memegenerator.net/instance/54379154

68. Made up sh*t True

69. TrueStrongWeakGuess

70. http://pixabay.com/en/traffic-sign-road-sign-shield-6664/

71. Traditional Lean / Agile
research phases ⟶ research cadences
solo & silo work ⟶ whole team work
deliver truth ⟶ show risk & process

72. DO LESS
TOGETHER
MORE OFTEN
to do
MORE
Adrian Howard (@adrianh)
quietstars.com

73. Want more?
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quietstars.com
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