Persona storytelling

Dara Pressley @uxdiva

Persona StorytellingNova UX - 2014

Dara Pressley - @uxdiva

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.

Storytelling makes a persona relevant….

What is a character persona without its story?


What is a persona?


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.


!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.


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


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.


It may seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most effective way to satisfy a broad population.

- Cooper


Personas & Proto Personas


Persona

Celine

Mother

Problem: Kids with food allergies

Need: Tips and tools to help care

for them.

Desire: Easy and Quick

Proto-Persona


CelineWife & 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

GoalsCeline 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.

SocialCeline 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.

ScenarioCeline 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.


Celine

Mother


Need: Tips and tools to help care

for them.

Desire: Easy and Quick

Chris

First year College

Problem: Cafeteria

Need: How to eat away at school

Desire: Affordable, no cooking

Amy

Runs a daycare


Need: Providing lunch and snacks

Desire: Parental approval

Erin

Hobby Chef

Problem: Wants feed back on

her creations

Need: A place to share

Desire: Social feedback


Telling the story


User Journey Maps

http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/

http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/


Mental Modal

http://boxesandarrows.com/what-is-your-mental-model/


Scenarios | Story Boardshttp://archive.aneventapart.com/2012/seattle/slides/03_KimGoodwin.pdf


Celine goes shoppingEmail meal plan

Time savers and helpful


Celine goes shopping

Email meal plan & Shopping list





Tips about where to find hypo-allergic foods






Time savers and helpful Teach children to read labels





Time savers and helpful products

Teach children to read labels





Single meals that work for everyone







Replacing ingredients to make the foods they’re used to

Single meals that work for everyone




Each persona should have at least one scenario planned out for them.

http://trello.com


User Pathways


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


Prioritize ContentCeline wants to... Smartphone Reader Tablet Laptop/Desktop Social

Plan meals and get shopping list X X X X X X X X X X

Read articles for helpful tips and tricks X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Find Recipes X X X X X X X X X

Product Review X X X X X X

Cooking tools X X X X X

Food storage (lunch) X X X

Find information about safe foods while eating out.

X X X

Communicate with other like her X X X X X X X X X! X X X

User generated recipes X X X X X X X X X

Bulk Food Purchases for hypoallergenic products

X

X - Celine!X - Amy !X - Chris!X - Erin


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.

Unique content, functionality, and user flows based on personas can be used to target user groups with a personalized experience.

“This user looks like Celine, and

Celine likes…”


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 PressleyWife & Mother

“I love, love, love talking about personas!”

Experience Architect

Devices & Networks• iMac • iPad Mini • iPhone 4s • Kindle Fire • Twitter

Previous Life• Poet | Fiction Writer | Tech Writer • Writing Instructor • Computer Instructor

Hobbies• Sims 3 - Oh Yeah! • Reading • Fiction writing

(sometimes) • What ever my kids or

husband want to do (mostly)

GoalsTo one day finish my novel!

Fun FactMy grandfather was an official griot - a Trinidadian storyteller.

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.

Thank You

Dara Pressley

@uxdiva

Questions & Answers

Persona storytelling

Design

Transcript of Persona storytelling