This document summarizes Barbara Vasi's presentation on personas at the Milan UX Book Club. It discusses the origins and purpose of personas, how they are created through user research and segmentation, and how they can be used throughout the design process to represent users and guide design decisions. Key aspects covered include defining primary and secondary personas, writing scenarios to showcase personas, and using personas to inform structure, content, visual, and business strategy design. While personas are a popular user research tool, some debate their methodology and practical application.

1. Personas
Milan UX Book Club 20.2.2014

2. Barbara Vasi
Humanist enthusiastic of the Digital world
Master in Web Journalism @ IED (2001)
Editor @ Wireless (2001)
Information
architect, Project manager (since 2002)
now Head of Delivery (where I learned the tricks of the trade)
Proud member of Milan UX Book Club since 2012!
(where I enjoy sharing experiences and discussing User eXperience Design)
Here I Am

3. Why Personas
Personas are fascinating:
because of their link to STORYTELLING
as a tool of “CULTURAL MEDIATION”
So I wanted to:
- study Personas and why they were developed
- tell about an experiment we made @ B Human
- hear about what you think about the matter

4. The context of birth of Personas
Industrial Age
Digital Age Programmers
Designers
Apologists
Survivors
Goals
Tasks

5. Goals and Tasks
End-condition
Stable
Human needs
Practical and personal
Intermediate process to achieve the goal
Transient
Changing with technology

6. Alan Cooper, 1998
(Thought-) provoking
Destructive (at first)
Constructive (in its second half)
(Sadly still) true

7. In the Industrial age the key advantage were MASS-PRODUCTION for
companies and products AVAILABILITY and LOW PRICES for customers.
The Digital age has changed the rules of the game: QUALITY prevails over
quantity.
Using digital products entails a higher COGNITIVE FRICTION: human intellect
must confront with a complex system of rules and with intangible objects.
INNOVATION is rapid and user satisfaction has a key role in long-term
loyalty.
The birth of User Satisfaction

8. Homo logicus and homo sapiens
Humans need the BIG PICTURE
while computers need DETAILS.
Programmers have to put
computer needs first.
User needs are a matter for
DESIGNERS.

9. The role of the Designer
Designers put human NEEDS and GOALS
at the center of the process, and (help)
make products that:
- can be built
- performs well
into something PEOPLE really WANT.
Digital
Product
Viability
(Business)
Capability
(Engineering)
Desirability
(DESIGN)

10. ARCHITECTURE, the human design part of programming, in which:
- USERS are studied
- USER SCENARIOS are defined
- INTERACTION is designed
- FORM is determined
- BEHAVIOR is described
DESIGN before building.
Architecture and Design

11. Interaction design
Starts from human NEEDS and GOALS.
Determines the inside of a product by describing the outside.
Provides TOOLS and METHODS for designers to avoid the risk of
being self-referential in design, bringing the user’s perspective
in the process of design.

12. Goal-directed design
The method developed by Cooper since
1992:
- novel ways of looking at problems
- guiding axioms
- mental tools
PERSONAS are the most effective tool.

13. Personas: Cooper’s Definition
A precise DESCRIPTION of the user, and what he wishes to accomplish.
Personas represent users throughout the design process.
They are hypothetical archetypes of actual users.
Personas are defined by their unique goals and allows to see the scope and
nature of the design problem.
Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

14. Personas: Mulder’s definition
A realistic CHARACTER SKETCH representing one segment of a Web site’s
targeted audience, an archetype serving as a surrogate for an entire group of
real people.
Personas are primarily defined by their goals. In some situations, they are
also defined by their behaviors and attitudes.
Personas are grounded in research and help create a shared understanding
and vision of whom you’re designing for and decide what you are creating.
Steve Mulder with Ziv Yaar, The User Is Always Right

15. Creating personas
Research Segmentation Personas

16. Qualitative Personas
Qualitative research
Segmentation
Personas
-
+ Low effort, increased understanding, low skills
No quantitative evidence, existing assumptions not
questioned
3-4 weeks

17. Qualitative Personas with Quantitative validation
-
+ Quantitative evidence, low skills
Additional effort, existing assumptions not questioned
Qualitative research
Segmentation
Personas
Test segmentation
through quantitative
research
6-8 weeks

18. Quantitative Personas
-
+ Less human bias, iterative process, more variables
Significant effort, high skills
Qualitative research
Segmentation
Hypothesis
Personas
Quantitative research to
gather data on
segmentation options 7-10 weeks
Segmentation based on
cluster analysis

19. User Research

20. Qualitative Research for Personas
A process of discovery which focuses on WHY something is happening.
It’s open-ended and reveals new things with a small sample size.
It’s all about finding STORIES.
INTERVIEWS: hear from users about their goals, attitudes and behavior
(5 users per segment)
FIELD STUDIES: see user goals, attitudes and behaviors in action
USABILITY TESTS: observe user behavior (but focus is more on the product than on users)

21. Focused on testing and proving hypothesis; it is about WHAT is happening.
It helps look for patterns with a large sample size. The data gathered can help
prioritize opportunities.
Qualitative research requires careful planning: you get what you put in.
SURVEYS: what users say about their goals, attitudes and behaviors
(min. 100 completion per segment)
ANALYTICS: what users do
CRM DATA ANALYSIS: what users are worth
Quantitative research for Personas

22. Segmentation
Segmentation consists in organizing individuals in clusters and can be
considered as the art and science of finding PATTERNS and STORIES in the
data.
It is a collaboratory, iterative and exploratory process.
User can be segmented qualitatively by:
- goals
- usage life-cycle
- behaviors and attitudes
Clusters can emerge from quantitative segmentation

23. Types of Personas
PRIMARY personas: the ones for whom you design; no more than 3 (Cooper),
1 or 2 (Mulder)
SECONDARY personas: important and considered in decisions about design,
but not as much as the primary personas
Unimportant personas: could visit the site/use the product, but are not
considered in decisions about design
Negative (excluded) personas: whom not to design for

25. The Elements of a Persona document
KEY DIFFERENTIATORS: make the persona unique
PHOTO: makes the persona real
DESCRIPTOR added to the name and QUOTE: make the persona memorable
PROFILE: where the story is told (attitudes are particularly important to define it)
Business objectives: are the explicit connection between the users in target
and the business model of the company
Precision (details) MORE IMPORTANT than accuracy.

26. Scenario
SCENARIO: the way personas come alive.
A concise DESCRIPTION of a persona using a software-based product to
achieve a GOAL (Cooper)
The STORIES of how a persona interacts with a web site, their documented
JOURNEY through the web site (Mulder)
Scenarios document the EXPERIENCE from the persona’s POINT OF VIEW.
Personas are the (cast of) characters of the story and scenarios are the PLOT.

27. DAILY-USE scenarios: main actions performed with the greatest frequency
NECESSARY-USE scenarios: all actions that must be performed with low
frequency
EDGE-CASE scenarios
1 to 3 scenarios per persona.
Interaction design must provide for all scenarios, but focus on DAILY-USE
ones.
Breadth (from start to finish) MORE IMPORTANT than depth.
Types of Scenarios

28. Writing scenarios

29. From users to features
SCENARIOS are the tool connecting USER research to FEATURE design.
Task analysis: user’s point of view
Use cases: system’s point of view
User
Research
Segments PERSONAS SCENARIOS
Task
analysis /
Use cases
Feature
design

30. STRUCTURE design: personas can be used to define information architecture,
navigation, interaction design. Through storytelling, they can be used to
communicate design decisions more effectively.
CONTENT design: personas help design all types of content (i.e. instructional
text, error messages, help content, multi-media) and the tone of voice.
So you can provide the right content to the right persona at the right time.
VISUAL design: personas help keep the focus on WHO matters most and
make the process of decision-making more OBJECTIVE.
Personas in the design life-cycle

31. Personas provide a FRAMEWORK for decision-making.
Personas make KNOWLEDGE about users actionable.
Personas bring OBJECTIVITY in a process where self-reference and personal
opinions are a real risk.
Personas are a powerful COMMUNICATION tool, because they tap into a
primal part of our brain: we all respond to STORIES.
Personas beyond User eXperience Design

32. Personas in Business Strategy
The ultimate goal of business strategy is making the
company successful.
Personas can provide the framework to create and
prioritize business initiatives, for they help bridge the:
USER gap: personas integrates user needs in
business strategy
COMMUNICATION gap: personas are a user-
friendly interface to data
EXECUTION gap: personas are re-usable across the
process

33. “Persona is a social role or character played by an actor”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona
Cooper sets the analogy with the art of acting both in tools/methods and in
the process:
- personas as CAST of characters, scenarios as SCRIPT, METHOD ACTING as
way to identify with users
- 3 phases of preproduction, production and postproduction
Mulder focuses on the importance of ROLE-PLAYING: thinking about what a
persona would do and act as a persona.
Personas and the art of acting

34. Some ideas from UX Design community

35. The debate on Personas
Chris Chapman, Senior Quantitative Experience Researcher @ Google:
Methodological and Practical Arguments against a Popular Method
Steve Portigal, Consultant and Book author:
Persona non grata
Andy Budd, co-founder and CEO @ Clearleft:
Personas suck in response to
Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO @ Basecamp
Personas?
Paul Bryan, User Experience Consultant:
Are Personas still relevant to UX Strategy?

36. Sources and further reading
Cooper, The
Inmates Are
Running the
Asylum
Mulder with Yaar, The User is Always Right (the
book)
The User is Always Right (on slideshare)
Quesenbery,
Storytelling
for User
Experience
Portigal, Interviewing Users

37. Contacts
@bibierre
it.linkedin.com/in/barbaravasi/
barbara.vasi [AT] gmail
barbara.vasi [AT] bhuman [DOT] it