The document discusses the use of personas in user experience design. It notes that while personas are commonly created, they are often not leveraged beyond the initial project. The presentation advocates for using storytelling to bring personas to life and make them more relevant. It provides examples of how to develop personas through attributes, goals, scenarios, and journeys. Storytelling techniques like scenarios and user pathways are presented as ways to tell the persona's story and ensure they remain central to design decisions.

1. Persona Storytelling
Nova UX - 2014
Dara Pressley
@uxdiva

2. Many companies go through the trouble of creating personas, only to file
them away in a drawer and gather dust after the initial project is complete.
In fact, many designers debate the usefulness of personas in the first place.
What is a character persona without its story?
Storytelling makes a persona relevant….
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

3. What is a persona?
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

4. Alan Cooper
In 1995, noted pioneer software
developer, developed the concept,
which he named personas. The
technique was popularized for the
online business and technology
community in his 1999 book.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

5. !
Personas are multidimensional representations of real users. The
Experience Community remains divided on whether they are based on
empirical data or the imaginations of the author. Cooper often writes
that the persona should at least be inspired by a real person.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

6. Guiding Principles
!
•
To focus on the needs of a
single or handful of target
users
•
To keep those needs central
to the strategy for the design
and development of the
project
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

7. Why not just design for everyone
The most successful products of the
20th and 21st century were those
that we developed with a single
target audience.
• 3m Post-It Note
• Rolling Luggage
• Facebook
80% of people hated the 1999
Dodge Ram. But the 20% who
loved it made it into a best seller.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

8. It may seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most
effective way to satisfy a broad population.
- Cooper
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

9. Personas & Proto Personas
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

10. Persona
Proto-Persona
Celine
Mother
Problem: Kids with food allergies
Need: Tips and tools to help care
for them.
Desire: Easy and Quick
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

11. Celine
Wife & Mother
Lawyer
Attributes
Low
Med
Hi
Cooking Skills
Amount of time for cooking
Amount of time for shopping
Social Connections
“The only thing we
are not allergic to
is air!”
Celine’s Story
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.
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
Social
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.
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.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

12. Celine
Mother
Problem: Kids with food allergies
Need: Tips and tools to help care
for them.
Desire: Easy and Quick
Chris
Erin
Hobby Chef
Amy
First year College
Runs a daycare
Problem: Wants feed back on
Problem: Cafeteria
Problem: Kids with food allergies
Need: A place to share
Need: How to eat away at school
Need: Providing lunch and snacks
Desire: Social feedback
Desire: Affordable, no cooking
Desire: Parental approval
her creations
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

13. Telling the story
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

14. User Journey Maps
http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

15. User Journey Maps
http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

16. User Journey Maps
http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

17. User Journey Maps
http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

18. User Journey Maps
http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

19. Mental Modal
http://boxesandarrows.com/what-is-your-mental-model/
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

20. Scenarios | Story Boards
http://archive.aneventapart.com/2012/seattle/slides/03_KimGoodwin.pdf
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

21. Celine goes shopping
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

22. Celine goes shopping
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

23. Celine goes shopping
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

24. Celine goes shopping
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods
Teach children to read labels
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

25. Celine goes shopping
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Teach children to read labels
Time savers and helpful
products
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

26. Celine goes shopping
Tips about where to
find hypo-allergic foods
Email meal plan
& Shopping list
Teach children to read labels
Time savers and helpful
products
Single meals that work
for everyone
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

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

28. Each persona should have at least one
scenario planned out for them.
http://trello.com
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

29. User Pathways
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

30. Annotations
Celine plans her menu
1) Home
Celine opens the home page
(mother persona)
!
Celine is putting together her meal plan for the
week in preparation for going to the grocery
store.
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
Home
Personal Plan
Login
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.
Shopping List
!
!
Ability to personalize menu.
1
2
3
4) Search
Celine searches for menu options.
After finding one that looks interesting
she clicks on it to view more
6
!
5) Recipe page
The recipe looks perfect. Celine saves
the recipe to her personal recipe book
and adds to menu plan.
Shopping List
Search & Results
Recipe Page
!
!
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
4
5
7
7) Shopping list - mobile
At the store, Celine reviews her list as she
shops.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

31. Prioritize Content
Celine wants to...
Plan meals and get shopping list
Smartphone
Reader
Laptop/Desktop
Social
XX
XXX
Tablet
XXX
XX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XX
Read articles for helpful tips and tricks
XX
Find Recipes
XX
XX
XXX
Product Review
XX
X
XXX
X
X
XXX
X
XX
Cooking tools
Food storage (lunch)
Find information about safe foods
while eating out.
XX
XX
X
Communicate with other like her
XXX
XXX
X X X!
XXX
User generated recipes
XXX
XXX
XX
X
Bulk Food Purchases for
hypoallergenic products
X - Celine!
X - Amy !
X - Chris!
X - Erin
X
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

32. Personalization
!
•
•
Cookied and Authentication
can serve as ways for the
system to identify the user
Content Management
Systems are getting smart
enough to predict user types
by following user behavior.
“This user looks like Celine, and
Celine likes…”
Unique content, functionality, and
user flows based on personas can be
used to target user groups with a
personalized experience.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

33. Planning, Personas & Storytelling
Personas should be leveraged for the planning of each new feature or
benefit.
!
Simultaneously, removal of features to be weighed against the impact of
those personas
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

34. Dara Pressley
Wife & Mother
“I love, love, love
talking about
personas!”
Experience Architect
Devices & Networks
•
•
•
•
•
Story
My mother wanted me to follow after her and become a computer programmer. But
a natural artist, I wanted to spend my time in writer’s workshop, theater, and the
dance studio. So I spent my life going back and forth between her world and mine.
Dancing from the time I was 2. Building my first computer game on an Atari when I
was 7. Having one of the first personal computers in our neighborhood — took up
most of the kitchen table. Enrolling in a performance arts school in 7th grade. Got a
Mac in 1984 and never looked back. Learned desktop layout to create a newspaper.
Majored in English and then Writing. Teaching classes both on fiction writing and
computing. On and on until finally my two worlds collided in the field of web
design.
iMac
iPad Mini
iPhone 4s
Kindle Fire
Twitter
Hobbies
•
•
•
•
Sims 3 - Oh Yeah!
Reading
Fiction writing
(sometimes)
What ever my kids or
husband want to do
(mostly)
Previous Life
•
•
•
Poet | Fiction Writer | Tech Writer
Writing Instructor
Computer Instructor
Goals
To one day finish my
novel!
Fun Fact
My grandfather was an
official griot - a
Trinidadian storyteller.
Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

35. Thank You
Questions & Answers
Dara Pressley
@uxdiva