On the use of person (characters) users in product development
User personalities or characters are one of the user-centered design tools or product design tools that are based on the idea that products should be created “around” people and their goals, rather than educating people on how to use products and Do not do "design for all." The key task in this case is to understand what the user needs through his behavior, attitude, needs and goals, showing empathy and design thinking.
A person (character) is a generalized but realistic description of a typical or target user of a product, that is, an archetype, not a real living person, but characters should be described as if they were real people. The character should not document every aspect of the life of an imaginary person, but should focus on those characteristics that influence what is being developed.
Strategy and design decisions are the main use of characters, but there are several other ways in which they can be used in the initial design phase. When working with an external agency or consultant, well-defined persons provide an easy way to describe the target audience of a product or service. Recruiting companies to study usability can also be easier with characters. Characters can be used to segment analytics to evaluate the behavior and usage of real users on the site.
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We are all accustomed to TK, user stories, why do we need characters? Characters are needed in order to get closer to a real client and not to forget him when developing a product, using the same references, and universal communication in a team without cognitive distortions and generalizations. At the same time, characters should not be confused with user segments, since persons are not built only on the basis of quantitative statistical analysis.
Answer: "As soon as possible." Of course, the characters must be based on user research in order to be completely accurate and represent the real users of the product. Ideally, the person creation process should be part of the product research phase before the actual design and development process begins. The behavior of each fictional user should be based on actual aggregated data obtained from the behavior of real users.
Creating a character is best done in a team: not because it is difficult, but because he will get more support for future use. To initiate the person creation process, begin by defining the characteristics of users observed in user studies. Group these features into clusters. If multiple clusters seem too similar, combine them together or eliminate any attributes that seem less important to the business. After the appearance of individual clusters, add details to make the character more realistic, believable and memorable.
To do this, specify the following information about the character:
Your goal should be to create a believable and lively character. Avoid adding extraneous parts that do not have any effect on the design. Although the name and photo may seem irrelevant, their function is to help remembering what is the No. 1 person’s task: so that all team members remember the users for whom they are creating the product.
The main advantage of using characters is that they create a general context for describing a certain type of users and, thus, focus efforts on achieving the person’s goal. At meetings, the name of the person is an abbreviation of the full set of attributes, desires and behaviors that must be considered when making design decisions. Appeal to the person eliminates the self-referential thinking, diverting the discussion from personal judgments and directing to the needs of customers. You do not need to spend time on the design and creation of extraneous functions that are not useful for the target person. You cannot design anything to please everyone!
Regardless of the type of approach to creating a person, the process includes 3 different stages:
To identify the characteristics / problems / goals of the person, you need to conduct qualitative research. Quantitative research will only confirm the validity of the person.
Next, I will give an example of an in-depth interview for drawing up persons for banking services for small and medium-sized businesses, and with this example I will show how to create a person.
One of the most important competences of a person who develops a product is the ability to ask the right questions to the right people. Collecting and understanding requirements is a complex process. This is due to the fact that customers may not know what exactly they want from the system, or they may give unrealistic requirements. They can give different requirements, which will lead to a conflict between the requirements, so we need to detect and resolve these conflicts. Without understanding the real need, it is extremely difficult to provide real value.
Usually the guide to the interview includes the following steps:
It is very important! Ask to turn off your mobile phone, be sure to say that the conversation will be recorded, and it is confidential. Explain the rules:
Saying is not enough. You must express kindness and attitude. Smile sincerely. You can even need to pour tea with cookies and first just talk about life. You can ask one of the following warming questions that are close to the topic of your interview (hereinafter referred to as approximate questions, it is not necessary to ask them all):
You can come up with your own questions, your goal is to talk to the interlocutor, so that he feels at ease and tune in to search and express ideas. The winning question for our context is: “Tell us about the service that surprised you” or solve the anti-problem: “What should be done to keep people away from the bank as much as possible?”
Various games work well, for example, story cubes, if you have taken design thinking. The question with cubes can be: “Imagine your business in the form of a story in the genre: fantasy, detective ...” Then the imagination will work ...
In order to make a demanded product - you need to deliver value. It is values ​​that determine the motivation and behavior of the consumer. What are some questions about values?
Next, we ask directly about business and specifics (do not forget, this is an example of questions for small and medium-sized businesses)
Let us turn directly to the banking product (after all, we are developing it).
On the Internet there are many templates for business cards person. If you need to throw, write in a personal.
I will give an example. You want to understand entrepreneurs who are engaged in small business and conducted interviews with 30 entrepreneurs who develop an IT product (mobile application, technology for targeted advertising, various services, etc.). While all of them are united only by the scope of their activities. For the person of this information is not enough. Next, we go over the interviews above and it turns out that they are all divided into three types:
A person who has a potentially successful idea and seeks to realize it.
A person engaged in the creation of products for hire. Works without office.
The man opened his business. It has a stable business model.
The person who works for hire, but at the same time additionally has his own business, which brings him unstable income.
As we see, each person has his own motives and behavior. Consider the monetizers hobby. It has a “business for the soul” or for interest. Business is seasonal or irregular, sometimes there is no time and energy to do it, but it is a pity to leave. Usually according to the recommendations. His portrait might look something like this:
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It provides an externalization of user knowledge to:
Traditional empathy cards are broken into 4 quadrants (speaks, thinks, makes, and feels), with the person in the middle.
Empathy card will help to get an idea about the user's personality:
Empathy cards work better if they are based on real data, so it is advisable to start creating them after conducting a user survey, such as an interview. In extreme cases, they can be created on the basis of existing knowledge and customer feedback. The quickly created empathy card serves as an excellent visualization at the meeting.
The Says quadrant (“Speaks”) contains what the user says out loud in an interview or in another study. Ideally, it contains shorthand and direct quotes from the study.
The Feels Quadrant “Feels” is the user's emotional state, often presented as an adjective plus a short sentence for context. Ask yourself: what is bothering the user? What does the user care about? How does the user feel the experience?
Cumulative empathy maps can also be ways to summarize other qualitative data, such as field studies. For example, an empathy card can be used to create a character instead of the traditional “business card” approach. Empathy mapping is a qualitative method, so you will need high-quality materials: user surveys, field research, diary studies, hearings, or quality surveys.
After building an empathy card and a person, you can go to the Kano model.
Often companies cannot introduce personas. There are several reasons why.
Experience and research shows that, depending on the degree and depth of research, as well as the size of the company, character creation takes 3–9 business days if only one employee participates in the process, or about 1.5 to 5 business days with 2 employees. Characters based on empirical data take more time than those based on non-empirical data.
A person (character) is a generalized but realistic description of a typical or target user of a product, that is, an archetype, not a real living person, but characters should be described as if they were real people. The character should not document every aspect of the life of an imaginary person, but should focus on those characteristics that influence what is being developed.
Strategy and design decisions are the main use of characters, but there are several other ways in which they can be used in the initial design phase. When working with an external agency or consultant, well-defined persons provide an easy way to describe the target audience of a product or service. Recruiting companies to study usability can also be easier with characters. Characters can be used to segment analytics to evaluate the behavior and usage of real users on the site.
')
We are all accustomed to TK, user stories, why do we need characters? Characters are needed in order to get closer to a real client and not to forget him when developing a product, using the same references, and universal communication in a team without cognitive distortions and generalizations. At the same time, characters should not be confused with user segments, since persons are not built only on the basis of quantitative statistical analysis.
1. When to create characters?
Answer: "As soon as possible." Of course, the characters must be based on user research in order to be completely accurate and represent the real users of the product. Ideally, the person creation process should be part of the product research phase before the actual design and development process begins. The behavior of each fictional user should be based on actual aggregated data obtained from the behavior of real users.
2. How to create characters?
Creating a character is best done in a team: not because it is difficult, but because he will get more support for future use. To initiate the person creation process, begin by defining the characteristics of users observed in user studies. Group these features into clusters. If multiple clusters seem too similar, combine them together or eliminate any attributes that seem less important to the business. After the appearance of individual clusters, add details to make the character more realistic, believable and memorable.
To do this, specify the following information about the character:
- Name, age, gender and photo
- Keywords describing what he does in "real life"
- Level of experience in using your product or competitors' products
- The context of how they will interact with your product? How often will they use it?
- Goals and problems your product will use to solve
- Quotes to summarize
Your goal should be to create a believable and lively character. Avoid adding extraneous parts that do not have any effect on the design. Although the name and photo may seem irrelevant, their function is to help remembering what is the No. 1 person’s task: so that all team members remember the users for whom they are creating the product.
3. Person-oriented product design
The main advantage of using characters is that they create a general context for describing a certain type of users and, thus, focus efforts on achieving the person’s goal. At meetings, the name of the person is an abbreviation of the full set of attributes, desires and behaviors that must be considered when making design decisions. Appeal to the person eliminates the self-referential thinking, diverting the discussion from personal judgments and directing to the needs of customers. You do not need to spend time on the design and creation of extraneous functions that are not useful for the target person. You cannot design anything to please everyone!
Regardless of the type of approach to creating a person, the process includes 3 different stages:
- Research or data collection
- Data analysis
- Character Creation
4. Questions for a user interview
To identify the characteristics / problems / goals of the person, you need to conduct qualitative research. Quantitative research will only confirm the validity of the person.
Next, I will give an example of an in-depth interview for drawing up persons for banking services for small and medium-sized businesses, and with this example I will show how to create a person.
One of the most important competences of a person who develops a product is the ability to ask the right questions to the right people. Collecting and understanding requirements is a complex process. This is due to the fact that customers may not know what exactly they want from the system, or they may give unrealistic requirements. They can give different requirements, which will lead to a conflict between the requirements, so we need to detect and resolve these conflicts. Without understanding the real need, it is extremely difficult to provide real value.
Usually the guide to the interview includes the following steps:
1. Greeting and setting the right context
It is very important! Ask to turn off your mobile phone, be sure to say that the conversation will be recorded, and it is confidential. Explain the rules:
- There are no right and wrong answers.
- Feel free to express feelings and emotions.
- To say everything, everything is important
- Be creative and open
Saying is not enough. You must express kindness and attitude. Smile sincerely. You can even need to pour tea with cookies and first just talk about life. You can ask one of the following warming questions that are close to the topic of your interview (hereinafter referred to as approximate questions, it is not necessary to ask them all):
- What are your qualities praise your friends?
- What are your strengths surrounding underestimate?
- What positive trait of character do you consider the most important in people?
- What is the negative trait of character most of all the rest makes you reject?
- Who do you think are the smartest people of our time?
- What is your life motto?
- What dream would you like to make in your life?
- What / who has pleased you lately? Tell me more
- What are your hobbies? What is it? Tell us more.
- Tell us about today or last weekend
You can come up with your own questions, your goal is to talk to the interlocutor, so that he feels at ease and tune in to search and express ideas. The winning question for our context is: “Tell us about the service that surprised you” or solve the anti-problem: “What should be done to keep people away from the bank as much as possible?”
Various games work well, for example, story cubes, if you have taken design thinking. The question with cubes can be: “Imagine your business in the form of a story in the genre: fantasy, detective ...” Then the imagination will work ...
2. Values
In order to make a demanded product - you need to deliver value. It is values ​​that determine the motivation and behavior of the consumer. What are some questions about values?
- What does success or success mean to you? What people associate with this concept? What events?
- What does self-realization mean to you? Does it include some stages, if so, which ones?
- How do you usually prefer to relax? In what countries? Why there? What is attractive in these countries? What repels in these countries? What emotions cause these trips? Why?
- What brands do you prefer? Are there brands that are close to you in spirit? Why exactly they?
- Do you follow the latest technological innovations?
- What people associate with success?
- Why did you become an entrepreneur?
- What personality skills do you most need for your business?
3. Business
Next, we ask directly about business and specifics (do not forget, this is an example of questions for small and medium-sized businesses)
- Tell us about your business. What services / products do you offer?
- What is the most difficult in your business and why?
- What do you have to fight every day?
- What are your goals for the next six months?
- What obstacles prevent you from reaching your goals?
4. About banks and banking services
Let us turn directly to the banking product (after all, we are developing it).
- What are you doing that helps or prevents you from managing your finances?
- Tell me, what is the role of the bank in your life?
- Please describe your positive experience with the bank. Tell me the details
- And what about the negative experience of working with a bank? Tell us more.
- How can you be called an active user of banking services? Why?
- How did you decide to choose a bank? Describe how you made the decision - what did you do?
- What one main thing influenced your decision?
- What can make you go from one bank to another?
- How much do you pay for banking services on average per month? How comfortable is this for you?
- What is the best way for you to communicate with the bank?
5. Variants of creating persons
On the Internet there are many templates for business cards person. If you need to throw, write in a personal.
I will give an example. You want to understand entrepreneurs who are engaged in small business and conducted interviews with 30 entrepreneurs who develop an IT product (mobile application, technology for targeted advertising, various services, etc.). While all of them are united only by the scope of their activities. For the person of this information is not enough. Next, we go over the interviews above and it turns out that they are all divided into three types:
Type number 1. Startups
A person who has a potentially successful idea and seeks to realize it.
Type number 2. Freelancers
A person engaged in the creation of products for hire. Works without office.
Type number 3. Niche entrepreneurs
The man opened his business. It has a stable business model.
Type number 4. Hobby monetizer
The person who works for hire, but at the same time additionally has his own business, which brings him unstable income.
As we see, each person has his own motives and behavior. Consider the monetizers hobby. It has a “business for the soul” or for interest. Business is seasonal or irregular, sometimes there is no time and energy to do it, but it is a pity to leave. Usually according to the recommendations. His portrait might look something like this:
6. Empathy card
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It provides an externalization of user knowledge to:
- create a common understanding of user needs
- help in making decisions.
Traditional empathy cards are broken into 4 quadrants (speaks, thinks, makes, and feels), with the person in the middle.
Empathy card will help to get an idea about the user's personality:
- it quickly visualizes user needs;
- it fits perfectly into the work on usability, representing valuable information about the user (based on it you can develop a prototype and test it);
- since its creation takes very little time, it is easy to update the map in accordance with the information received;
- It helps managers understand the benefits of your design ideas.
Empathy cards work better if they are based on real data, so it is advisable to start creating them after conducting a user survey, such as an interview. In extreme cases, they can be created on the basis of existing knowledge and customer feedback. The quickly created empathy card serves as an excellent visualization at the meeting.
The Says quadrant (“Speaks”) contains what the user says out loud in an interview or in another study. Ideally, it contains shorthand and direct quotes from the study.
"I trust ... because I never have a bad experience in communicating with the bank support service."The Thinks Quadrant (Thinks) reflects what the user thinks throughout the user experience. Ask yourself (from collected qualitative research): what does the user's mind take? What is important to the user? You can have the same content in both Says and Thinks. However, pay special attention to what users think, but may not speak out loud. Try to understand why they do not want to share - unsure, shy, polite or afraid to tell?
"I want something reliable, so I opened a contribution to ...".
"I do not understand what to do next, I hate incomprehensible interfaces."
"This is really annoying."The square "Makes" shows the actions taken by the user. From research, what does the user physically do? How does the user do this?
“Am I so stupid not to understand how to buy stocks?”
- Refreshes the page several times.
- Opens the websites of banks to compare rates.
The Feels Quadrant “Feels” is the user's emotional state, often presented as an adjective plus a short sentence for context. Ask yourself: what is bothering the user? What does the user care about? How does the user feel the experience?
- Impatience: pages load too slowly
- Embarrassment: too much conflicting information or not enough
- Excitement: doing something wrong
Cumulative empathy maps can also be ways to summarize other qualitative data, such as field studies. For example, an empathy card can be used to create a character instead of the traditional “business card” approach. Empathy mapping is a qualitative method, so you will need high-quality materials: user surveys, field research, diary studies, hearings, or quality surveys.
6. About specific products
After building an empathy card and a person, you can go to the Kano model.
- The basic (expected) properties are the fundamental properties of the product (or service) that are inherent in it by default. Take for granted
- The main (desired) properties - these are the properties of the product, the level of implementation of which directly affects customer satisfaction.
- Delightful (acting) properties are always something unexpected for the consumer, for example, additional or some extraordinary properties of a product or service.
7. Why can a person not work?
Often companies cannot introduce personas. There are several reasons why.
- Negative past experience. Sometimes people are too abstract and cannot be used to make decisions. Sometimes they are unrepresentative. These are errors in their compilation.
- Misunderstanding of person management. Very often you have to listen to the following: tell me why we should spend time studying persons. We already know who our customers are, we have been working with them for 25 years. The truth is: yes, companies already have a lot of information, so it is sometimes difficult to justify research. In these situations, it is useful to think about persons and to represent them as a tool for structuring, rather than searching. Everyone already knows a lot about clients, but when knowledge and assumptions are not aligned with strategy and goals, the lack of people leads to a lack of focus.
- Characters were created without communication with the team and imposed on people. This is the biggest barrier to widespread adoption and significant impact of characters. Characters should not be the isolated efforts of the UX team. For stakeholders to use characters, they must believe in them, feel invested and own them. Otherwise, people will not understand the data behind them. Invite interested parties to participate in the research session.
- People do not know what characters are or why they are useful. The characters were created, but then nothing happened, the discussion around them ceased. This situation often arises when people do not know how they can effectively use characters to influence their projects. Help your stakeholders understand the value of the character, and also give them ideas for formal ways to use them in projects.
- Substitution purposes for the use of persons. Characters must be used for a specific, well-defined goal. Often people create the wrong tool for their needs or want (re) to use characters created for a completely different purpose.
8. How long does it take to create a person?
Experience and research shows that, depending on the degree and depth of research, as well as the size of the company, character creation takes 3–9 business days if only one employee participates in the process, or about 1.5 to 5 business days with 2 employees. Characters based on empirical data take more time than those based on non-empirical data.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349740/
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