Suite of personas created for Level 3 Business Customer Portal.

1. What is a Persona?
A profile of a typical user (multiple, prioritized)
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2. How are they made?
1. Create a Proto-Persona
2. Talk to expected users (research)
! Ideally in person, but online survey or
interview OK
3. Gather the project team
4. Tell stories from the research
5. Create personas together
! Picture, name, tagline, frustrations, goals,
workflow
6. Validate by showing to people who know
users
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3. Exercise: Make a Proto-Persona for Project _____
Name
- Sketch
Demographics
- Tagline
- Age
- Work Environment
- Job title
- Education
- Experience (work, product, industry)
Pain Points/Needs/Goals
- What frustrates them with today’s
solution?
- What do they want to accomplish?
- What do they value?
- What does their company value?
- What’s a typical workflow?
Potential Solutions
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4. John Milanski, portfolio 4

5. Why bother?
! Keeps the development team focused
! Eliminates ‘I think’ from the development process
! Provides a summary of user research for execs
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6. How do I use these Personas?
Product Manager
! Business Kickoff
! Pick one for your project
! Validate by talking to expected users
! Use persona to make requirement tradeoffs
Analyst, UX Designer, Programmer
! Use persona to remind you what the user
needs and point out what is superfluous
! Use persona to evaluate ideas
! “How would Nate use this?”
Pick one, and display it at all meetings
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7. FIX-ers
Nate
Network Operations
Ivan
Internal
Gene
Generalist
DO-ers
Amanda
Accounts Payable
Pam
Provisioner
OVERSEE-ers
Pete
Planner
Mike
Manager
technical
non-technical
big picturespecialist
#1
#2
7
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8. Users: 3 types, 7 personas
Job Title What do they do? Knowledge Frequency Detail
Pam Provisioner
(Voice Orders, Quoting)
Voice orders, video orders, quoting med Frequent High
Amanda Accounts Payable Auditing (billing silo) med Frequent High
Nate Network Administrator Knowledgeable, in the weeds (Tier
2)
high Frequent High
Gene Generalist
(IT Contractor or Admin)
Data Entry (infrequent, no
knowledge)
low infrequent Low
Ivan Internal
(Account Team, Support)
Setup the customer, educate Med Infrequent Med
Pete Planner
(Architect)
Knowledgeable, holistic high infrequent Med
Mike Manager
(Voice, Network, Exec)
Tracking (less in the details) high Infrequent Low
Differ by level of technical knowledge, frequency and breadth of portal use,
and level of detail in their job
Doer
Overseer
Fixer
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9. Nate: Network Administrator
My responsibilities
! Enter trouble tickets, especially for outages.
! Make sure the network is up and performing at its best (no latency or errors)
! Keep an eye on sites that are ‘problem children’
What motivates me, what I value
! No one complaining
What I need from the Portal
• Detailed latency & error reports on all circuits: “My morning coffee.”
! Site Nickname: “I can’t memorize what BBDD73169 is. 200 of them, drives me nuts.”
My typical day (one workflow)
My NOC calls me at 2am to say a site is down, get circuit number from my Excel
‘cheatsheet’, try to find out what is going on using the Portal
“I pride myself on a high-quality network; I like detail.”
Education: Associates Degree in Information Technology
Experience: 15 yr. Started in IT support.
Personal: 39yr. old, married, 4 yr. old daughter, Route 66 enthusiast
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10. Pam: Provisioner (Voice, Quoting)
My responsibilities
! Order and port telephone numbers (ELS only), file LNP trouble tickets
! Get quotes from multiple vendors
What motivates me, what I value
! Family over company
! Save company money
! Get through the day, everything go smoothly
What I need from the Portal
! Finish ‘x’ number of orders in ‘x’ minutes, be quick
My typical day (one workflow)
Submit a TN order, wait, customer doesn’t like the number, submit disconnect, fight the
system, repeat
“It’s better than Customer Service”
Education: little, HS, community college
Experience: 15 years
Personal: married, grown kids, many non-work activities, laid back
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11. Amanda: Accounts Payable
My responsibilities
! Pay the bills
! Compare use with the bill, look for errors
What motivates me, what I value
! Keep management informed of costs
! Feel like everything is in order
What I need from the Portal
! View of all accounts, all services, complete billing data (monthly charges, usage)
My typical day (one workflow)
Every month, download all invoices worldwide (slow, many clicks), all carriers, examine
line-by-line, report to management; sometimes cancel service, or dispute charge
“Monthly, accurate invoices that I can get fast.”
Education: college degree
Experience: 10 years, not technical, narrow but deep
Personal: grown kids, no voice at work, detail oriented, tired
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12. Gene: Generalist (Reseller, Mr. Technology)
My responsibilities
! The conduit between my company and yours
! Do everything technical
What motivates me, what I value
! Avoid problems
What I need from the Portal
! Know just enough about a lot of things, but not your circuits or BusOrgs
! Dealing with your company is only one part of my job
My typical day (one workflow)
Someone asks what it would take to make the internet faster at our office, so I figure
that out. Then I go download the invoice and take it to out accounts payable team.
“I’m a jack-of-all-trades.”
Education: Technology degree
Experience: Lots of industry field experience, but novice portal user
Personal: Always reachable, but my outside interests are more important
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13. Ivan: Internal (CSM)
My responsibilities
! Fix any kind of customer problem, whether portal or not
! Educate the customer about the portal (demo portal)
What motivates me, what I value
! Want to feel helpful
! Want customer to be self-sufficient (the fewer calls, the better)
! I need to take care of many customers
What I need from the Portal
! Portal needs to be quick and easy with complete customer information
My typical day (one workflow)
Customer yells at me for something I have nothing to do with, I look in my confusing
and complex system, I fix it or send a message to someone internally who can.
“Fix customer problem… or pass it to the right person”
Education: Bachelors Degree in Business or IT
Experience: varies, 1-10 years at the company
Personal: single, work stops at 5.
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14. Pete: Planner
My responsibilities
! Monitor network for needed upgrades
! Place and see orders through
! Decide best technical approach
What motivates me, what I value
! Accurate, detailed information
What I need from the Portal
! Up-to-date, technical information (voice OR data)
! Is there fiber in Building X?
My typical day (one workflow)
Every quarter, look at utilization, if > 80% or all trunks often busy, download report,
pass to network group, look at L3 network map, order capacity from L3 sales engineer
“I need specific and technical information, but not urgent”
Education: Bachelors, technology
Experience: 15 years in telecom or IT
Personal: confident, family
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15. Mike: Network Manager
My responsibilities
! Keep the network running
! Manage team of network admins
! Handles escalations and more complex issues for his team
What motivates me, what I value
! Feel that things are flowing well
! Maximize uptime
! Balance ‘do it right’ with ‘do it now’
What I need from the Portal
! A mobile application so can check on things anytime
! Tools that are simple and fast
My typical day (one workflow)
Check status both internally and in the Portal, talk with you about issues & upgrades
“My network should just work”
Education: College degree, technical
Experience: Lots, moved up from technical roles
Personal: Skis regularly, but the job doesn’t stop.
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16. Appendix
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17. Avoid rework: Does your coded UI… (unless the wireframe says differently)
Rank Guideline Example
1 Look and work same on all platforms IE->Chrome->Firefox
desktop->tablet->mobile (gs.statcounter.com)
2 Use terms they know (not system) Customer number (not Bus Org ID)
3 Provide system feedback Progress bar, field validation, error messages
4 Use plain language No codes or abbreviations in error messages
5 Use consistent words, layout,
interaction
‘Enter’ works on every page
6 Skip graphics and data they don’t need No background graphics, lines, shadows
7 Prevent errors Show format hint in data entry fields
8 Make objects, actions, options visible Gray-out unavailable options, show all
questions
9 Provide shortcuts for expert users ‘Enter’ for most common page action
10 Provide an undo (not a confirm dialog) Back or undo button
11 Provide help: short with simple steps,
searchable, top things they want to do
Field-level help icon ‘?’
Source: Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, 1994.
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