This is for UX designers, HCI and service designers, as well as anyone in product strategy, marketing and product management. At IxDA on Thursday 27 Nov 2014, I shared how we at Atlassian redesigned our personas. But what's more important is how you can re-think your personas and not only design their *content* the right way, but their *form* in a new way, to make them much more intuitive to use.

1. Personas - redesigning their content,
rethinking their form
BEN CROTHERS • DESIGN MANAGER • @BENCROTHERS

3. Personas are like asparagus
!
If you’ve only ever had the canned stuff, you’d
think that’s what asparagus just is, and you’d
think it is truly awful.
You would avoid it, and tell everyone else to
avoid it too.
And rightly so.

4. credit: wEnDaLicious | https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwny/

5. Personas are like asparagus
!
But if you’ve tried real asparagus—especially
lightly sautéed with hoi sin sauce and sesame
seeds—then you’d be a fan.
So many of us have only ever known the
canned asparagus version of personas, and
either dismiss them or are outright against them.

6. Real personas are great
!
But real personas—created from qualitative and
quantitative research, goal-based and related to
the jobs that people actually need to get done—
are incredibly useful at various points along the
journey of designing and building websites and
products.

7. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?
1983: Alan Cooper starts
using them.

8. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?
1993: The word spreads at conferences.
Distinction is made between marketing
personas and user experience personas.

9. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
1998: Alan Cooper publishes
The Inmates are Running the Asylum.
Personas go mainstream…
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?

10. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
Personas go boom in a big way!
Everyone loves them, but starts to
confuse marketing vs. UX personas, and
a lot of people do them poorly.
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?
We start to smell snake oil…
!
Jason Fried crashes the party, saying
they’re artificial, abstract
and fictitious. :(

11. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
Personas go into free-fall!
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?
Kim Goodwin publishes
Designing for the Digital
Age, re-clarifying
marketing vs. UX
personas…

12. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
?
…but EVERYONE is
putting the boot in now,
including San Saffer.
Jill Christ and Stephanie Carter talk about
‘BS personas’ and real personas

13. A brief history of personas and sentiment
CHI
InterCHI
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Confusion reigns…?
?

14. What are personas, again…?
!
Representations of distinct groups of users
Informed by research
Authentic sets of goals and expectations that
drive their behaviours
Guide decisions about functionality and design

16. We use personas at Atlassian
!
They have lots of researchy goodness
baked in
They stop is designing for ourselves
We used them everywhere…

17. But we had problems

18. credit: http://www.stuff.co.nz/

19. We started playing favourites
!
We got used to only using some and
neglected the rest
We were in danger of excluding significant
use cases and behaviours

21. The personas had turned into just…artefacts
!
They were up on the walls and in the toilets…
But they faded into the background, and
became wallpaper
Us designers forgot that not everyone
automatically knows how to use them

23. Their meaning was fading too
!
Over time we habitually reduced our
reference and understanding of the personas
We ended up only using about 20% of what
was in them

24. This persona should have had lots of detail…
Alana
Project
Manager
Product
Manager
CEO
Systems
Administrator

25. …But just became a ‘bossy manager’ cliché
Alana
Project
Manager
Product
Manager
CEO
Systems
Administrator

26. Insight
!
Personas have to be relevant and useful
How to use personas should be baked in
Pay attention to the form, as well as content

27. So we
redesigned their content
and
rethought their form

28. Our full-page personas now have more character
and behaviours…

29. We made a big distinction between personas
and roles…
Alana
Project
Manager
Product
Manager
CEO
Systems
Administrator

30. We made a big distinction between personas
and roles…
!
We have 14 products and 40,000 customers,
with a huge variety of roles
Atlassians love card games, so we
repackaged the persona and role content…

31. And created them as cards
Alana
Project
manager
Product
manager
CEO
Persona cards
Systems
Administrator
Role cards

32. Role cards - What people do in a product
Easy-to-scan
front
Questions this
role would ask
Personas most
likely to do
this role

33. Persona cards - How they do it
Behaviours
Characteristic
quote
Questions based
on Alana’s
attitudes

34. We play them together
How might we improve
charts in JIRA for Alana
the Project Manager?

35. We play them together
Or how might we improve
charts in JIRA for Will the
Project Manager?

37. Keep them simple!
We thought it’d be awesome to have different
skills, points, powers and upgrades!
But no, if everyone were to use them, we had
to keep them simple
Maybe we’ll do skills and upgrades next time ;)

38. Persona sheets and cards - the system

39. Persona sheets and cards - the system
We read the full-page versions to keep a
comprehensive sense of each persona
We use the cards by ourselves or in teams
It’s about triggering richer conversations

40. Application #1: ‘Pick > Reveal > Discuss’ game:
A team looks at a scenario to design for
Each team member goes through the role cards and picks out the one
they think is most important in that scenario
Everyone reveals the one they chose, and then discuss any differences

41. Application #2: Pitch and critique
A designer presents their designs
The rest of the group critique the designs by playing out the scenario
with each role involved, and with whichever persona matches that role

42. Application #3: Workflow modelling
Product manager, designer and developers map out a workflow, with all
roles involved in the scenario
They then add different personas to the roles, to see how that would
affect the flow

43. Your turn
!
What would a mobile version of your
personas look like?
What could you bake in to make it
more intuitive to use?

44. Go forth and make! (or print)
!
Start with prototypes, make your own
Get sets printed online for a slicker result
(e.g. http://www.makeplayingcards.com/ )

45. Thank you
BEN CROTHERS • DESIGN MANAGER • @BENCROTHERS