beyond task based testing: interviews and personas

Beyond Task-Based Testing: Interviews & PersonasOctober 29, 2013

Darlene FichterJeff Wisniewski

Road Map What’s a persona? Benefits of personas Isn’t task based testing enough? Do I

need to do personas too? How to create personas

Interviewing and other methods How to use personas

Caveats Design /= visual design Design = product design as a whole

from features, colors, interactions, content, organization, etc.

Personas Personas are “stand ins” or hypothetical

archetypes created to represent the primary user segments for your web site

Each persona represents a key user type that shares demographic characteristics, needs, behaviours, and environment

Personas Although personas are imaginary they

are derived from user research Each persona is given a name and

personal details to make them more realistic

Amy (Soo-Jin)

second year graduate student in Biological Enngineering

currently splits her time between class work, time in the lab, and studying from home

since much of her work is either course driven or in the lab, she does not consider herself a particularly heavy library user

tends to rely on lectures rather than library resources

uses company websites quite frequently for information on the lab products she uses and uses professional association sites for recent papers and information on developments in her field

uses the popular search engines initially to get a sense of what types of materials are out there then moves to Web of Science and Compendex for access to journal articles

if she can avoid going to the library, she will

at home she always connects through remote access to get access to full articles through the databases for which the library has subscription

interested in doing exhaustive searches for journal articles on her dissertation topic

no one has shown her how to use the full breadth of the resources and functionality of e-Journal on the library web site; she has a sense there are more resources and tools than she knows about

uses ILL often to gain access to articles that she cannot access through Pitt subscriptions

Customer Segments to Personas Originated in the 1930’s for marketing

brands started using fictional characters to represent a customer segment

Alan Cooper, a software developer, coined a related term and similar practice: personas.

His book The Inmates are Running the Asylum popularized the use of personas and designing for “archetypal users”.

Benefits of Personas

#1 “User” Centered Design Way to have users attend all your

design meeting that representative of the major user types

Each persona has the weight Personas are based on and embody

what we know about our library’s web site users

Personas keeping it about the user

#2. Support Evidence Based Decision Making Way to harness the user research data

to inform web site development Easier to remember a persona than

pages of facts and figures: path data, survey results, interview summaries etc.

Share abstract data in a compelling and memorable way

Personas encapsulate evidence

#3 Where to put design effort Personas spell out what the site needs

to do Persona goals and task provide a focus

-Avoid scope creep- Elastic band users

Personas provide focus

#4. Communicate to Stakeholders in a Language Understood by Everyone

Easy and fun way to communicate design decisions

Keeps the focus on the user Avoid “geek” speak

Personas speak to everyone

#4 Build Consensus and Commitment to the Design Communicate a common direction Reduce the need for extremely detailed

specifications. Nuances of behaviours and preferences are captured in the persona and narratives

Personas build shared vision

Task Based Testing How personas work with task based

testing

Task Based Testing Extremely useful Evidence of how users actually use your

site

Are you getting the most value out of your task based testing investment?

Task Based Testing

Even on a shoestring, still resource intensive Usability testing takes time Only do one test or maybe 2 or 3 iterations due to

resource constraints Most designs need many iterations

Using personas allows you to raise the base level of the design that you use for task based testing

Small Studies & Representative Sample A small “shoestring” usability study

usually can only pull in a few participants broadly categorized by age, gender, year in school if an educational setting, department/profession in a firm etc.

But are these the broad categories that help us zero in on primary user types?

The TasksWhere do the tasks come from? Some are easy. i.e. frequently used on

the web site now. We know that our 30 study rooms are booked around the clock from the online form.

What about designing bookable study room form on the mobile site? Is there interest? How/when/where/who would use it and what’s the best design?

TasksSome Tasks are Tar Pits

Find an article on .... Do we know based on user research (or

just on our personal hunches) the typical way this questions is approached by primary user types? What happens when they have too large a search result? Null result?

Find out how to borrow a laptop from the Library. Will they browse or search? If search has too many results, what will they

try next?

PersonasReality check that helps you create

better tasks

How to Create PersonasResearch!

Environmental scan Interviews Ethnographic research

Environmental scanning Identify true peers Literature review Web search Provides a framework

Ethnographic research Gorillas in the Mist Time consuming Expensive Highly useful!

Interviews Useful for creating from scratch and for

local validation of “borrowed”

Finding subjects Leverage your networks General advertising not useful

Logistics Voice recorder of smartphone app Transcription Analysis

What to ask and how to ask it

What you’re doing and why You’re helping us build a better website Be candid

General computer usage habits When you start your browser where’s are

the first places you go? Favorite sites, and why?

What to ask and how to ask it If you need to:

Find books to take on vacation Write a paper…Where’s the first place you’d go?

What to ask and how to ask it How often do you go to the library? How often do you go to the library website? When do you go to the library website? What

do you do when you’re there? (Take them to site)

What immediately draws your attention? What information did you look for but not

find? Is there something you looked for on the

homepage but didn’t find?

Now what?

Create

Refine

Interview

How many personas ? Primary constituencies 5-7 generally recommended

How to use the personas In the room Frame discussions

Your Next Team MeetingWhat does Leonard think?

http://static.tvguide.com/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/A_F/Bi_Bp/Big_Bang_Theory/season4/big-bang-theory298.jpg

Question?

Thanks!