Persona Pathways

Dara Pressley
@uxdiva
Persona Pathways

Dara Pressley - @uxdiva
Just past the waterfront in Downtown Seattle, Western and Elliot Avenues merge into
one. They had been running parallel for some time, but like most streets downtown
curve with the angle of the Sound.

The two streets come together from two different angles on a steep incline. City
Engineers in planning this merge had to consider exactly how the traffic should come
together. Most of all, they had to plan for the pedestrian traffic with sidewalks and
crosswalks.

Pedestrian
Pathway
•People didn’t want to walk all the
way to the corner.
•They wanted to take the shortest
route possible to the other street,
even though that route - muddy
and steep - was harder to walk.
•It was faster and got them to their
desired goal.

๏ If engineers had researched pedestrian behavior
they would have known what was going to happen.
In fact, there are many street corners that show
evidence of this behavior.
๏ The engineers could have created a sidewalk that
wrapped through the grass, that was easier to
walk or stroll for accessibility needs.

There is another corner in Leesburg. The two streets are not as challenging as the one in
Seattle. The street is ﬂat, and the pattern is quite typical. But the block is long and on the
other side is a strip mall with IHOP and Walmart.

Pedestrian Pathway
Again, people created for themselves the pathway that fastest for reaching their goal.
It just so happens that this lot belongs to a church. Therefore, private property.
The solution is not the same as the first. There is a restriction in place.
The goal this time - is not to make the path easier - but to keep people off the grass.
Maybe with a simple fence or hedge.

In both these cases, understanding the user wants and goals would have been helpful in
creating a better plan for the street.

Touch points with users
๏ User Research
๏ Focus Groups
๏ Interviews
๏ User Testing

But it's not enough. In between these touch points, the team
often forgets to include the user in the conversation.
Yet, the user is the most important stakeholder in the
product design.

Personas
Personas are a great proxy for including the user is all your
conversations and documentation.

In 1995, noted pioneer software
developer Alan Cooper, developed
the concept, which he named
personas. The technique was
popularized for the online business
and technology community in his 1999
book.
In 1983, while creating the project management app
Plan It, Cooper had interviewed some users for the
program. While development, he would have
conversations with himself as one of those users, Kathy.
Cooper states that this was really his first persona. He
formalized the processed the process in 1995 for a
project he was working on for Bank of America.

Zombie Personas
In a 2010 Bar Camp Presentation
on Zombie personas, Tom Allison
states:
•UX in the Real World: There's
no such thing as "No
Persona”
•When the team doesn’t take
the time create personas,
Zombies are created instead
Characteristics of a Zombie
•They thrive in obscurity
•They’re not really “alive” to
the project but they are still
hard to kill
•They don’t seem that
dangerous but they’ll eat the
brains of your team
•They are afraid of the light of
the “collaborative” day

Basically, if your team can’t agree on the who the end
users is, much time and energy will be wasted arguing
over features that may not even be the right.

How to create powerful personas

Base them on real people
•Unless you have a lot of experience in character development it can be
hard to create believable fictional characters.
•Using real people helps to assure that you creating believable personas
•Who’s motivations, goals, and frustrations make sense

How to get
real people
๏ User interviews are great —
preferred!
๏ But also look around your own
network of friends and
acquaintances
Kim
Simone
Kevin
Haley

Kim
Bridgespan needed personas that
represented both philanthropist and non-
profit organizations.
This particular persona represented one part
of a team. Her husband was the wage earner.
Her job was to coordinate their social
activities and their philanthropy.
She was based the mother of one of my
childhood friends.

Simone
While working on a project for Science
Magazine. I created the persona of a student
researcher who was pre-med majoring in
Molecular Biology.
She was based on my sister.

Haley
Also for Science Magazine. Erin was a hobby
scientist. She did not study science formally
beyond college requirements. But she has a
deep love of nature and loves reading the
magazine for information.
She was based on the project manager.

Kevin
For CustomInk, I created this persona of a
teacher who was responsible for coordinating
the efforts of getting custom t-shirts for
different school events, including Field Day
and the Dare Program.
For this persona, I interviewed the teacher in
my children’s school who did this.

For every project I’ve worked on, I’ve found at least 1 person I knew that
was the perfect user for that product.

Celine
Mother
Problem: Kids with food allergies
Need: Tips and tools to help care
for them.
Desire: Easy and Quick
Proto-Persona
No time or budget? No Excuses.
Develop over time as more is
learned about that user.
The most important thing is that
the team agrees on who they are
designing for.

Telling the Story

I want to create a site that helps
people with their food allergies
Before we plan a single feature or requirement.
Let’s get our personas to help us out.
Stop right there

Celine
Wife & Mother
Celine’s Story
“The only thing we
are not allergic to
is air!”
Lawyer
Attributes
Cooking Skills
Amount of time for cooking
Amount of time for shopping
Social Connections
Low Med Hi
Devices & Networks
• Macbook Pro
• iPad Air
• iPhone 5c
• Kindle White
• Twitter
• Google +
Frustrations
• Becoming a short order cook
• Not having proper ingredients on hand
• Children don’t like the “new” food
• Sending food to parties
• Not sure what to shop for
• Eating out
• School Lunch
Goals
Celine would like to be
able to find her family
health meals that fit their
dietary needs. She also
wants the creation
process to be quick to fit
with her busy schedule.
Social
Celine is well connected
social and will use her
network for tips and
advice. She would be
very likely to share
anything she learned with
network.
Scenario
Celine goes grocery shopping >> at the store she searches for food
to make for the next few days >> her children keep adding food to
her cart >> her bill is a lot more than expected >> dinner that night
is a mix of several different meals for the different allergies.
Celine is a very busy corporate lawyer. She is also a wife and
mother of 2 young children - a son 5 and daughter 3. She
struggles to find a balance between her home and work life.
Celine has recently discovered that her family suffers from various
food allergies. Some of which are life threaten. No one has
exactly the same line up of allergies and she is not sure how to
feed everyone. To make matters worse, her children are picky
eaters.

Each persona should have at least one
scenario planned out for them.
•Some of these come directly from
the persona document
•Brainstorm for additional scenarios
that make sense to their personality
and motivations
•Don’t worry yet about if it fits what
you do
•Anything too out of scope can be
saved in an “outer space” list.
http://trello.com

Celine goes shopping

Celine goes shopping
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods
Replacing
ingredients to
make the foods
they’re used to
Single meals that work
for everyone
Time savers and helpful
products
Teach children to read labels

Celine plans her menu
(mother persona)
Celine is putting together her meal plan for the
week in preparation for going to the grocery
store.
Home Login Personal Plan
Search & Results
Shopping List
Shopping List
Annotations
1 2 3
4
5
6
7
1) Home
Celine opens the home page
Celine expects to see her menu plan
OR login functionality
2) Login
Celine logs in to the website. Her page
is refreshed to her personal plan page.
Login functionality needs to exist
3) Personal Plan page
Celine reviews the menu plan created
for her. She knows that some of the
meals would not work for her family,
and wants to change them.
Ability to personalize menu.
4) Search
Celine searches for menu options.
After finding one that looks interesting
she clicks on it to view more
5) Recipe page
The recipe looks perfect. Celine saves
the recipe to her personal recipe book
and adds to menu plan.
Ability to save and add to plan.
6) Shopping List
Celine Exports her meal plan to the
shopping list. She doesn’t need
everything and wants to adjust the list
Ability to tweak list
7) Shopping list - mobile
At the store, Celine reviews her list as she
shops.
Recipe Page

Convergent Ideas
As our main persona, the needs of Celine are paramount. However, secondary personas may lead to some
commonalities that overlap. For instance, restaurant guides would be helpful for both Celine and Chris. If
Chris’ needs can be easily integrated into her pathway, we can take care of both experiences.

User Stories
The user wants to login to get features
associated with her account.
Instead of the generic user story, use your persona.
The Celine wants to login to get
features associated with her account.

Test Cases
Celine is able to login
Erin is able to login
Writing your test cases by persona assures that the development has considered
all the scenarios.
In this case, that the user levels of member as chef have different permissions.

Journey Maps
•Journey maps are the Ace in our tool
kit. In that I mean they can be both
the first and the last
•So far, the workflow I have shown
assumes that there hadn’t yet been
a site created.
•In that case, I could use journey maps
on competitor sites to learn what
does and doesn’t work for them before
I start.
•If I do have a product already, then
journey maps should definitely be
created around the current product
as a first step
•A combination of maps done around
our own product, competitor
products and comparative products
will give the best understanding
about where we can really improve.

Journey maps allow us to capture the users reaction to the product or services
as they step through it.
The map usually includes:
•The path they take through the site
•What activity they are performing
•Their emotional reaction
•Their thoughts around the process.

Celine’s Journey
Login Reviewing
Thoughts
Emotions
Path
Looks like a cool
place. I could really
use some of these
features
I hope this isn’t going
to post anything to my
Twitter.
Looks

Once those items are captured, the map is completed by the team by adding:
•Recommendations for improvement
•Any examples of who is doing this well

In the end, Persona Storytelling is the best was to make sure
your users are considered at each step in the process of adding
or even removing features.
This process assures that we create the right pedestrian
pathways.

Thank You
Dara Pressley
@uxdiva

Persona Pathways

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