Step 1. Audience Definition & Segmentation

Not convinced this is relevant? Remember that people fundamentally don’t change much and having a grounding in who your audience really are, OUTSIDE of your own context will prevent you from ‘solutioneering’ – defining only the traits you feel you need or want. We’ll get to context later...

There are also other ‘trait theories’ you may want to explore, such as the HEXACO model. You could also use Type theory or other models, but we have found FFM to be the most simple and practical in day-to-day use. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology

Understanding People (Basic Personality Psychology)

It may seem obvious, but we really do need to start by thinking of our ‘users’ as real people.

Using personality psychology, we can understand where people are different, what makes them

similar and generally visualise them to help humanise them for design purposes.

A good place to start is with personality traits - One of the most established and respected ‘trait

theories’ is that of the Five Factor Model (FFM) – aka ‘The Big Five’, pioneered by Lewis Goldberg.

Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism

The tendency to be imaginative, independent, and interested in variety vs. practical, conforming, and interested in routine.

the tendency to be organized, careful, and disciplined vs. disorganized, careless, and impulsive.

the tendency to be sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate vs. retiring, somber, and reserved.

the tendency to be softhearted, trusting, and helpful vs. ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative.

the tendency to be calm, secure, and self-satisfied vs. anxious, insecure, and self-pitying

Grouping individuals together

Case Study: British Heart Foundation

Professional Need Personal Connection Proxy Relationships

Doctor (GP) Heart Patient (Recent) Volunteer

Heart Nurse Heart Patient (Medium/Long Term)

Business Manager/Executive

Intermediary (Teacher) At Risk Adult Shop Customer/Donor

Researcher (Funded) Concerned Relative Event Participant

(Health) Journalist Grieving Relative Support Group Member

15 distinct end-users (min) Arranged into 3 logical groups; 5 per group to give balance (and avoid bias) Potentially other logical groups could be used… these are based on their connection to the BHF

Cross-segmenting roles: By mindset (mental modelling)

Case Study: British Heart Foundation

Just want to get something done…

Not sure what to find/expect…

Keen to get involved… Willing to be convinced…

Doctor (GP)

Heart Nurse

Intermediary (Teacher)

Researcher (Funded)

(Health) Journalist

Heart Patient (Recent)

Heart Patient (Medium/Long Term)

At Risk Adult

Concerned Relative

Grieving Relative

Volunteer

Business Manager/Executive

Shop Customer/Donor

Event Participant

Support Group Member

Weighting 9 9 6 8

Segmentation: From 15 users to 4 Personas

Case Study: British Heart Foundation

Just want to get something done…

Pragmatists

Not sure what to expect/find…

Seekers

Keen to get involved…

Activists

Willing to be convinced…

(potential) Conformist

• Use a sliding scale to map out

each persons personality

• Look for similarities,

differences and patterns

Who is your audience and what kind of people are they?

Meet John… • Finance Director at ACME Ltd

• 50-55 years old

• Married, with two children (15 and 18 year old girls)

• Lives in Hertfordshire

• Drives a BMW 5 Series Touring (company car)

• Shops at Sainsbury’s

• Uses a Blackberry and a Windows Laptop

• Understands the basics of LinkedIn, but decided to skip the Facebook and Twitter hype; feels irrelevant

• Watches BBC News, Downton Abbey and classic Bond movies

Personality Profile

Open to experience

Cautious Curious

Conscientiousness

Careless Efficient

Extraversion

Introvert Extrovert

Agreeableness

Antagonist Cooperative

Neuroticism

Nervous Confident

Step 2. User Story, Goals & Objectives

Understanding Goals & Objectives

Goals

Long term, unstructured, difficult to measure

Objectives

Short term, well defined, measurable

“We need to stay ahead of our

competitors”

“We need to improve efficiency across

the clinical team”

“We want to increase our market

share by 10%”

“We want to reduce our overheads

by 20% over the next 2 years”

• Feel free to adjust the user

profile to suit your context

• Keep them broad and cross all

users; don’t target individuals

Pick somebody from your audience and give them a story

User Profile

Propensity towards goal(s)

Not bothered Highly Motivated

Propensity towards objective(s)

Not bothered Highly Motivated

Internet Literacy

Low High

Brand Awareness/Loyalty

Not influenced Brand Loyal

Financial Attitude

Frugal Thrift

Customer Stage

Cold Prospect Loyal Customer

Johns story (in his own words)

I’m proud of where our company has gotten to following the loss of major contracts in the recession and an internal restructuring after merging with a competitor. Now I want to use our strong position to ensure maximum profitability and be prepared for any future economic uncertainty.

…and in our words…

John is very proud of his company and he appreciates that he has skilled staff but he wants to achieve more through the current set of resources. John keeps an eye on administrative and business tasks, like payroll, invoicing, project resources, yet leads the company in major strategic decisions. It is critical for him to achieve better tracking and management of resources. At the same time, he wants to streamline their admin processes to allow employees to focus more on clients’ projects. John feels their existing HR systems don’t allow them to efficiently extract the intelligence from previous work and he strongly believes that a mechanism to share and “exploit” previous knowledge would boost the company.

• Goal(s): Leverage the internal potential we have in our team

• Objective(s): Track employee efficiency on projects and identify areas for improvement; along with ROI from change management