Personas - User Focused Design (eBook)

Contents 6
1 Introduction: Stories About Users 11
1.1 A Career with Personas 11
1.2 To Be Able to Enter into the Lives of the Users 14
1.3 Focusing 16
1.4 Many Names, One Concept 18
1.5 Product Development 18
1.6 Personas for IT and Products 19
1.7 Two, Four, or Six Personas? 19
1.8 A Process, not a User Portrait 19
1.9 Ten Steps to Personas 21
1.10 Other Approaches to Personas 22
1.10.1 The Goal-Directed Perspective 23
1.10.2 The Role-Based Perspective 23
1.10.3 The Engaging Perspective 24
1.10.4 The Fiction-Based Perspective 25
1.11 Criticism 25
1.12 Persona, Narrativity, and System Development 26
1.13 Reporting at Virk.dk and the Citizens of Denmark 26
1.13.1 Reporting Through Virk.dk 27
1.13.2 The Starting Point 27
1.13.3 The Personas 28
1.13.4 Scenarios 30
1.13.5 In Use 30
1.13.6 Borger.dk 30
1.13.7 The Personas Descriptions 32
References 34
2 A Slice of the World 36
2.1 Preparation 37
2.2 Methods 39
2.3 Examples of Data Collection 40
2.3.1 Coats and Down 40
2.3.2 Virk.dk 44
2.3.3 Borger.dk 45
References 46
3 Finding Connections 48
3.1 Get the Meaning Across 49
3.1.1 Variables 50
3.1.2 Affinity Diagrams 51
3.1.3 System of Coordinates 51
3.2 Use of Secondary Data 53
3.3 Group Analysis 54
3.4 From Hypothesis to Knowledge 55
3.5 Is It Possible to Generalise? 56
3.6 Is the Analysis Reliable? 56
3.7 Is the Study Valid? 56
3.8 Opposition to the Results 57
3.9 The Final Number 58
3.9.1 Borger.dk 58
3.9.2 Virk.dk 59
3.9.3 Website for Asthmatics 60
3.9.4 Coats and Down 61
References 62
4 Persona Writing 63
4.1 Writing the Persona 65
4.2 Stereotype, Archetype, or Persona 66
4.3 People as Form 67
4.4 Personas as Characters 67
4.5 Fact or Fiction 68
4.6 Engaging Stories 68
4.7 Thelma & Louise: Recognition, Alignment, and Allegiance
4.8 A Real Person 71
4.9 Back to the Persona Description 73
4.10 Consider the Reader 74
4.11 Writing Style 75
4.12 Photos 76
4.13 The Name 78
4.14 Group Personas 78
4.15 Interested Parties 80
4.16 Assumption Personas, Ad Hoc Personas and Proto-Personas 80
4.17 Lay-Out—A Danish Template 80
4.18 Posters, Mood Boards, and Playing Cards 81
4.19 Documents Supporting the Persona Description 83
4.20 Video Personas 86
4.21 Personas in Use 86
4.22 A Persona Template 86
References 87
5 Personas in Use 90
5.1 Situations 91
5.2 Three Theories as to What Makes People Act 93
5.3 Interaction Design and Product Design 94
5.4 Acceptance 94
5.5 Including the Organisation in the Validation 95
5.6 Dissemination 96
5.7 Personas in Use 97
5.8 Scenarios for Discussing Future Crises 97
5.9 Scenarios for IT System Development 98
5.10 Persona and Scenario 102
5.11 Creating a Story 102
5.12 Scenarios as Stories 104
5.13 Narrative Structure 106
5.13.1 The Scene 107
5.13.2 Events 107
5.13.3 Goals 108
5.13.4 Obstacles 108
5.13.5 Cohesion 108
5.13.6 Closure 109
5.13.7 Causality and Plot 110
5.13.8 The Narrator 110
5.14 Design for Various Usages 112
5.15 Writing and Reading 112
5.16 The Difficult Writing Process 113
5.17 The Scenario and the Reader 113
5.18 Documentation 115
5.19 Co-design 115
5.20 Acting 118
5.21 Advantages and Obstacles, Pros and Cons 118
5.22 Templates 119
References 120
6 Personas Go Agile 123
6.1 Persona User Stories 124
6.2 Understanding the Persona 125
6.3 The User Story 126
6.4 The Method 126
References 127
7 Going Global—International Personas 128
7.1 Data for International Personas 129
7.2 Planning and Funding 130
7.3 International Data Collection 130
7.4 Recruitment of Participants 131
7.5 Analysis 132
7.6 Presenting the User Insights 132
7.7 Benefits of International Personas 133
7.8 Perspectives on Culture 133
7.9 Arla Foods—From Blue Collar Workers to Empathy 135
References 137
8 Automatic Persona Generation for Online Content Creators: Conceptual Rationale and a Research Agenda 139
8.1 Introduction 139
8.1.1 State of the Art in Data-Driven Personas 140
8.1.2 Evaluation of Personas 141
8.2 Automatic Generation of Personas 141
8.2.1 Need for Automatic Persona Generation 143
8.3 APG: System and Methodology 146
8.3.1 Overview of System Functionality 146
8.3.2 Persona Generation Process 148
8.3.3 Applicability of APG in Varied Contexts 150
8.4 Setting the Research Agenda for APG 151
8.4.1 Design Philosophy of Automatically Generated Personas 152
8.4.2 Choosing and Generating Profile Information 152
8.4.3 Deciding Information Architecture 157
8.5 Summary of Challenges in Automatic Persona Generation 159
8.6 Conclusion 160
References 161
9 Making Your Personas Live 165
9.1 Updates and Revision 166
9.2 Ambassadors 166
9.3 An Instrument in the Tool-Box 166
9.4 What Personas Are Used for 167
9.5 Benefits 167
9.6 Value 168
9.7 Challenges 169
9.8 Recommendations 171
9.8.1 Have Thorough and Valid Data, It Provides Credibility 171
9.8.2 The Description Should Evoke Empathy 172
9.8.3 It Should Be Easy to Distinguish the Descriptions from Each Other 172
9.8.4 Keep Persona Descriptions and Scenarios Separate 172
9.8.5 Consider What Tasks the Personas Should Solve 172
9.8.6 Obtain Support in the Organization from Both Employees and Management 173
9.8.7 Consider How to Share Knowledge 173
9.8.8 Sustain the Method 173
9.9 Goal Achieved 173
References 174