Putting Personas to Work: Getting Personas Adopted Throughout Your Organization. Presented by Carol Smith at the Cleveland IIBA Chapter meeting on March 12, 2013. Personas need to be recognized and relied on by the entire team and creating a successful persona program can be a huge challenge. This session covers strategies for making sure that the personas you create become essential to your team.

1. IIBA Meeting
March 2013
Putting Personas to Work
Getting Personas Adopted
Throughout Your Organization
Presented by Carol Smith
@Carologic

2. User Experience Prof Assoc
Supports people
who research, design, and evaluate
the user experience
of products and services.
www.uxpa.org

3. Which Student?
Rick Connie
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjkbh/ via http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caharley72/ (Christopher Alison Photography) via
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0

4. Benefits
• Efficient and effective
• Team learns and remember
• Reduced influence based on _________
• Better products
• Help teams avoid:
• Designing for themselves/technology
• Designing for everyone

5. Controversy
• Irrelevant information
• “Pseudo-science”
• Not trying to be scientific
• Statistical methods used to analyze data
• Rigorous, repeatable methods
• Result in mostly qualitative data
The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design
by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin

7. Getting Buy-In for Personas
• We don’t need UX – we know our users
• Tell us the story
• What are they really doing?
• What are their goals?
• Roadblocks?

8. Selling Internally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895.jpg

9. Introducing Personas

10. Progressive Disclosure
• Like real-life, dating
• You are the match-maker
• Create opportunities to get to know them
• Tell the story, effectively
• Support recall of significant details

11. Progressive Disclosure

12. Tell the Story
• Clarify how the personas are to be used
• Support design and development
• Limitations
• For each persona:
• Goals, Needs
• How use product
• Challenges
• “Irrelevant Information” creates the mnemonic

13. Make it Real
• Introduce Artifacts
• Encourage and answer questions

15. Share what you learn

16. Successful Programs
• Form a team that includes product/project
team members
• The team:
• Supports persona development
• Reviews personas regularly
• Advocates for personas
• Watches for opportunities

17. Team Leader
• Curates personas
• Tracks work that may influence personas
• Identifies opportunities to enhance them

18. Keep Personas Alive
• Make opportunities to sew them into culture
• Regular touch points
• Refresh documentation regularly
• E-mail addresses for personas

19. Working Sessions
• Include them at meetings
• Role play or “channel” the persona
• Review of interface thru eyes of Persona
• Analyze competition
• Review stories/scenarios
What would they do? Would they use this?
The User is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web
by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar.

20. Activities
• Panel with “Personas” (role playing)
• Individual teams, products, etc.
• Answer questions in character
• Meet & Greet
• Birthday party

21. Artifacts
• Public
• Posters
• Large Boards
• Personal
• Persona
• Reference Sheets
• Books

22. Connect to Project Work

24. Communication Plan
• What to communicate
• Progressive disclosure - Highlights
• Updates
• Tips for use
• When
• To whom (team, stakeholders, etc.)
• How (Web site, Email, etc.)

25. Plan for Updating Personas
• Ongoing work
• Include open questions in new projects.
• Include in planning templates
• Usability study triggers a persona review.
• Communication Plan
• Regular reviews.
• Plan for distribution of updates.

26. Reusing Personas
• Up-to-date personas and profiles used:
• Indefinitely for same product
• Goals and Needs must remain static
• Inform new persona - preliminary context

27. Not Repurposed
• For different:
• Products
• Scenarios
• Needs and goals

28. Persona Teams (Families)
• Extend - include all aspects of experience
• Complex set of products
• Group personas in meaningful ways

29. Example – Online Shopping

30. Online Shopping (cont)
• One persona = all Shoppers
• Unlikely
• More likely:
• Small set of personas for each role
• Few more for additional roles

31. Share What You Know
• Personas interact at various times
• In person
• Virtual “handshakes”
• Convey to the team:
• Where occur?
• When?
• Frequency?
• What information is exchanged?

32. Knowledge Shared
• Clear relationships between personas
• Frequency of interactions
• Needs from each other
• What provide to each other

33. Different Lenses
• Pain points
• Product, service, experience
• Motivations
• Goals, needs, tasks, occupation, family,
and environment
• Commonalities
• Tech use, tech purpose, demographics,
occupation, and context of use

34. Prioritize Relationships
• Which interactions most important?
• Users
• Product functionality
• Visual work flows are ideal

35. Next Steps
• Identify gaps and plan to fill them.
• Sync with market segments (if they exist).

36. Start Now
• Conduct research with users
• Create strawman Profiles now
• Expand Profiles into Personas
• Build on what you know
• Keep digging - each project can answer
more questions

37. Do UX Early & Often
• Create Information Radiators
• Personas
• Artifacts
• Schedule of activities
• Tell others about the power of Personas

38. Recommended Readings
3

39. Contact
Carol J. Smith
Twitter: @Carologic
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/caroljsmith
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/carologic
Speaker Rate: speakerrate.com/speakers/15585-
caroljsmith

40. Special Thanks
Richard Douglass – previous co-presenter on
this material.
@RichardDouglass
http://improvedusability.com/

41. References
Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services by Kim Goodwin (one chapter)
The Persona Life-Cycle by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin
The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web by Steve Mulder
The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research by Mike Kuniavsky
Babcock, L. and Sara Laschever. (2008). “Ask For It: How Women can use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really
Want.” Bantam Books.
Godin, Seth. (2010) “Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?” Penguin Group.
Ury. William L. (1991) “Getting Past NO: Negotiating in Difficult Situations.” Bantam.
Fisher, Roger and William L. Ury. (1981) “Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.” Penguin Group.
Kennedy, Gavin. (2004). “Essential Negotiation.” The Economist and Profile Books LTD.
Lavington, Camille. (2004) “You’ve Only Got Three Seconds: How to make the right impression in your business and social
life.” Doubleday.
Lewicki, Roy J., et. Al. (2004) “Essentials of Negotiation.” McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Young, Ed. (2011) “Justice is served, but more so after lunch: how food-breaks sway the decisions of judges.” Discover
Magazine. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-
how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/ Retrieved on October 24, 2011.