Why let the characters down
Hello!
We are launching tomorrow the course “Designing UX / UI” , which is a bit exciting, since the second is not quite a programmer course, and even radically different from the first one (Digital Marketing). In general, we are waiting for the start and the first reviews from our students, but for now the next favorite material is from our teachers about the characters.
Go.
')
In short: Characters are a handy tool for performing UX tasks. Why don't they often help? Find out which pitfalls prevent characters from being useful, and how to avoid them.
Characters - my horse. I conduct a one-day intensive course on what characters are, how to create them, and how to use them to get great results. I really like to lead this course, as characters are one of the most abstract components in such an analytical discipline as UX. I love to remove the aura of mysticism from this topic, to make it specific and to solve typical problems faced by practitioners.
Characters are collective images of groups of your target audience, sharing similar views, values and behaviors regarding the product. These are humanized “snapshots” of relevant and meaningful features, for which you group your users based on research results. Often they look like this:
Sample character ( Source )
Since they are abstract, characters are misunderstood and misused for many years. Often, UX specialists come to my course after a bad experience with characters in search of answers: what went wrong and how to achieve better results next time?
In this article, I will point out the typical pitfalls that make the characters fail and I will point out strategies for success in the future.
A failed attempt to use characters in the past is often the biggest obstacle to future success. Those who once saw the characters remain on the sidelines, without having a significant impact on the project, often write them off completely, considering it a stupid waste of time. We'll have to make a lot of effort to convince these skeptics of the value of the characters. But you can succeed by teaching them and demonstrating successful examples of characters (ideally from your own organization).
Characters do work — or rather, they most often work. But people have a remarkable ability to make generalizations from a single observation, so it is expected that someone could put an end to characters (or any other UX technique) if his personal attempt was unsuccessful. You can refer to logical thinking, pointing to the failure of generalizations made on the basis of a single experience. However, you need to find out what went wrong last time and try to avoid this trap in the next project with the characters. The most frequent problems are discussed in the remainder of the article.
Characters do not work. We created them before, but nobody used them.
It can be hard to even get started if you cannot get the support of the character creation initiative from decision makers. Management may be skeptical for several reasons. For example, say "we already know everything about users."
But Susan, why should we spend time and money talking to and learning from our users? We already know who our users are, we have been doing this for 25 years!
Truth be told, yes, they already know a lot about users, so it is difficult to justify a study of the audience with which you have worked for many years. In such situations, it is advantageous to perceive characters and present them as a tool for organizing knowledge rather than as a way to obtain them. Yes, everyone already knows a lot about consumers, but when knowledge and assumptions are not consistent in a team, the lack of a shared vision leads to confusion when making decisions.
The greatest benefit from the creation and use of characters is a clear mapping of certain types of users on whom everyone can focus and use them to coordinate decisions. Clear descriptions of users lead us away from designing “for ourselves” and remove the differences about what the “user” wants.
This is a serious obstacle to the widespread introduction of characters and their meaningful use. Characters should not be a personal feat of the UX team, presented to the rest as a work of art. In this case, people will use it as works of art - they will hang on the wall of the cabinet to occasionally admire.
Where do these characters come from?
In order for employees to use characters, they must believe in them, to feel their contribution to their creation and to feel themselves as their creators. The most successful characters are created with the involvement of those who will use them. Otherwise, people will not have an understanding of the information inherent in the characters and the thoroughness of their study. Colleagues might think that the UX-department just disappeared somewhere for a few weeks, made up stories, and now asks everyone to play along with their jokes with imaginary people. This is clearly NOT the attitude that we want to promote.
To avoid this trap, you must connect the end-user characters to the process of creating them. Invite employees to research sessions. Send out a daily summary of the activities undertaken to create characters. Help people see in the early stages how your research reveals consumer segments so that by the time you introduce your characters, colleagues understand their meaning and value.
The characters are created, but nothing happened, their discussion has calmed down, and now they collect dust somewhere on the common disk. This situation often occurs if people do not know how they can effectively use characters for the benefit of the project. In the end, it all comes down to the failure of communication and learning.
- What other characters? And, are you talking about those tricks with pictures that someone sent me last year?
- And what exactly should we do with them? How will they help us do our work?
Characters are not leaflets. On paper, only the submission of characters. What you really wanted was to take the characters from the paper and place them in the consciousness of your colleagues. You want the characters to be organically and naturally referenced in each discussion and in each decision made. So it’s not right to simply create characters, introduce them to the team, and round it up
Not everyone knows what they are useful for and how to refer to them. It is your task to train your employees, to illustrate the effectiveness of the characters and to consolidate their use in projects. Set an example: don't let the characters sink into oblivion, keep bringing them to the meetings to lay the groundwork for the discussion. In the end, possession of characters and faith in them gives 90% of their value. Help your colleagues understand the value of the characters, as well as give them an idea of how the characters are formally applied in projects.
Prepare a core of like-minded people who will lead the implementation. Hold an exhibition in the dining room or a series of lunch-and-learn activities. Attend teams and introduce characters, tell where they came from and how to use them. Tell colleagues how a representative sample of users is created for testing, scripts are written for design inspiration and usability testing tasks, and analytics are segmented on the basis of character data. If your colleagues are working on Agile, teach them how to add characters to their events and discussions as links to information about users.
Characters are not a universal tool for all occasions, they should be used with a clearly defined goal. In order for the characters to be useful, the data presented in the character must reflect the purpose of this character and the segment of work that he should influence.
Often people create a tool that is not suitable for their needs, or they want (re) to use characters created for completely different purposes. It's like trying to stuff a square cube into a round hole.
Consider two types of characters created for the bank:
Imagine that we used marketing characters for a bill-paying project. Most likely, the information about them will not be sufficiently accurate or useful. And vice versa: characters for a bill-paying project will not be very helpful in developing marketing materials to attract new customers.
If you have had a bad experience with characters in your organization, perhaps one of the typical pitfalls listed above may be the cause. Determine where you have gone astray and level the course. If you are going to use characters for the first time, use this note as a list of what to avoid, and solve problems as they arise.
Make a plan of action, introduce characters to management, analyze past failures and suggest appropriate solutions. Also convey the value of the characters to the business, to awaken the interest of the authorities. Train your colleagues, mention characters in meetings, and strengthen their positions in your projects. Come back and demonstrate the success you have achieved through the use of clear user images in your work.
If you can avoid these typical pitfalls, the introduction of the characters will be successful from the very beginning, you will convince the skeptics, and you will never hear people say "Characters do not work, we tried them before, and no one used them."
Characters will become your fad.
THE END
Thanks for attention. We are waiting for questions, comments and other things.
We are launching tomorrow the course “Designing UX / UI” , which is a bit exciting, since the second is not quite a programmer course, and even radically different from the first one (Digital Marketing). In general, we are waiting for the start and the first reviews from our students, but for now the next favorite material is from our teachers about the characters.
Go.
')
In short: Characters are a handy tool for performing UX tasks. Why don't they often help? Find out which pitfalls prevent characters from being useful, and how to avoid them.
Characters - my horse. I conduct a one-day intensive course on what characters are, how to create them, and how to use them to get great results. I really like to lead this course, as characters are one of the most abstract components in such an analytical discipline as UX. I love to remove the aura of mysticism from this topic, to make it specific and to solve typical problems faced by practitioners.
Characters are collective images of groups of your target audience, sharing similar views, values and behaviors regarding the product. These are humanized “snapshots” of relevant and meaningful features, for which you group your users based on research results. Often they look like this:
Sample character ( Source )
Since they are abstract, characters are misunderstood and misused for many years. Often, UX specialists come to my course after a bad experience with characters in search of answers: what went wrong and how to achieve better results next time?
In this article, I will point out the typical pitfalls that make the characters fail and I will point out strategies for success in the future.
Characters were created but not used.
A failed attempt to use characters in the past is often the biggest obstacle to future success. Those who once saw the characters remain on the sidelines, without having a significant impact on the project, often write them off completely, considering it a stupid waste of time. We'll have to make a lot of effort to convince these skeptics of the value of the characters. But you can succeed by teaching them and demonstrating successful examples of characters (ideally from your own organization).
Characters do work — or rather, they most often work. But people have a remarkable ability to make generalizations from a single observation, so it is expected that someone could put an end to characters (or any other UX technique) if his personal attempt was unsuccessful. You can refer to logical thinking, pointing to the failure of generalizations made on the basis of a single experience. However, you need to find out what went wrong last time and try to avoid this trap in the next project with the characters. The most frequent problems are discussed in the remainder of the article.
Characters do not work. We created them before, but nobody used them.
No leadership support
It can be hard to even get started if you cannot get the support of the character creation initiative from decision makers. Management may be skeptical for several reasons. For example, say "we already know everything about users."
But Susan, why should we spend time and money talking to and learning from our users? We already know who our users are, we have been doing this for 25 years!
Truth be told, yes, they already know a lot about users, so it is difficult to justify a study of the audience with which you have worked for many years. In such situations, it is advantageous to perceive characters and present them as a tool for organizing knowledge rather than as a way to obtain them. Yes, everyone already knows a lot about consumers, but when knowledge and assumptions are not consistent in a team, the lack of a shared vision leads to confusion when making decisions.
The greatest benefit from the creation and use of characters is a clear mapping of certain types of users on whom everyone can focus and use them to coordinate decisions. Clear descriptions of users lead us away from designing “for ourselves” and remove the differences about what the “user” wants.
Characters were created in isolation and imposed on people.
This is a serious obstacle to the widespread introduction of characters and their meaningful use. Characters should not be a personal feat of the UX team, presented to the rest as a work of art. In this case, people will use it as works of art - they will hang on the wall of the cabinet to occasionally admire.
Where do these characters come from?
In order for employees to use characters, they must believe in them, to feel their contribution to their creation and to feel themselves as their creators. The most successful characters are created with the involvement of those who will use them. Otherwise, people will not have an understanding of the information inherent in the characters and the thoroughness of their study. Colleagues might think that the UX-department just disappeared somewhere for a few weeks, made up stories, and now asks everyone to play along with their jokes with imaginary people. This is clearly NOT the attitude that we want to promote.
To avoid this trap, you must connect the end-user characters to the process of creating them. Invite employees to research sessions. Send out a daily summary of the activities undertaken to create characters. Help people see in the early stages how your research reveals consumer segments so that by the time you introduce your characters, colleagues understand their meaning and value.
Communication failure: people do not know what “characters” are and how useful they are.
The characters are created, but nothing happened, their discussion has calmed down, and now they collect dust somewhere on the common disk. This situation often occurs if people do not know how they can effectively use characters for the benefit of the project. In the end, it all comes down to the failure of communication and learning.
- What other characters? And, are you talking about those tricks with pictures that someone sent me last year?
- And what exactly should we do with them? How will they help us do our work?
Characters are not leaflets. On paper, only the submission of characters. What you really wanted was to take the characters from the paper and place them in the consciousness of your colleagues. You want the characters to be organically and naturally referenced in each discussion and in each decision made. So it’s not right to simply create characters, introduce them to the team, and round it up
Not everyone knows what they are useful for and how to refer to them. It is your task to train your employees, to illustrate the effectiveness of the characters and to consolidate their use in projects. Set an example: don't let the characters sink into oblivion, keep bringing them to the meetings to lay the groundwork for the discussion. In the end, possession of characters and faith in them gives 90% of their value. Help your colleagues understand the value of the characters, as well as give them an idea of how the characters are formally applied in projects.
Prepare a core of like-minded people who will lead the implementation. Hold an exhibition in the dining room or a series of lunch-and-learn activities. Attend teams and introduce characters, tell where they came from and how to use them. Tell colleagues how a representative sample of users is created for testing, scripts are written for design inspiration and usability testing tasks, and analytics are segmented on the basis of character data. If your colleagues are working on Agile, teach them how to add characters to their events and discussions as links to information about users.
There are fundamental mistakes in your characters.
Characters are not a universal tool for all occasions, they should be used with a clearly defined goal. In order for the characters to be useful, the data presented in the character must reflect the purpose of this character and the segment of work that he should influence.
Often people create a tool that is not suitable for their needs, or they want (re) to use characters created for completely different purposes. It's like trying to stuff a square cube into a round hole.
Consider two types of characters created for the bank:
- Characters for wide coverage marketing : A set of characters attracted by a large bank's marketing team to represent users of various banking products, such as deposits, checking accounts, housing loans. The goals and scope of these characters is very wide. The information gathered and embedded in these characters will be very general and useful mainly for the marketing service to bring the benefits of the product to potential customers.
- UX Addressable Characters: A set of characters attracted by a project team that recycles a bill payment process for customers with a checkbook. The purpose and focus area of this second group are very clearly delineated. The information embedded in the characters will have a positive effect on the interaction design and experience of using the bill payment function.
Imagine that we used marketing characters for a bill-paying project. Most likely, the information about them will not be sufficiently accurate or useful. And vice versa: characters for a bill-paying project will not be very helpful in developing marketing materials to attract new customers.
Conclusion
If you have had a bad experience with characters in your organization, perhaps one of the typical pitfalls listed above may be the cause. Determine where you have gone astray and level the course. If you are going to use characters for the first time, use this note as a list of what to avoid, and solve problems as they arise.
Make a plan of action, introduce characters to management, analyze past failures and suggest appropriate solutions. Also convey the value of the characters to the business, to awaken the interest of the authorities. Train your colleagues, mention characters in meetings, and strengthen their positions in your projects. Come back and demonstrate the success you have achieved through the use of clear user images in your work.
If you can avoid these typical pitfalls, the introduction of the characters will be successful from the very beginning, you will convince the skeptics, and you will never hear people say "Characters do not work, we tried them before, and no one used them."
Characters will become your fad.
THE END
Thanks for attention. We are waiting for questions, comments and other things.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/351456/
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