Microsoft offers an alternative to custom characters

In 1983, Alan Cooper, with a light wave of his hand, awakened the first user character in design. Cooper, a software developer who laid the foundation for many new concepts, had just surveyed a group of potential customers. The understanding came to him that by focusing on the motives of real users, and not on one’s own needs, one can with great success solve difficult problems. Later, in his critical analysis of design, Cooper began to model the gestures, speech characteristics and thought process of fictional individuals, which were created based on the images of the people he interviewed.

The concept of characters quickly gained popularity in both design and development. And no wonder: they help us better understand what consumers need and predict how they will behave in situations where direct communication can be difficult.
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But now we are becoming aware of what the negative side of the characters is. They are by nature an amalgamation, an averaged set of attributes, which we attribute to our average user. But in reality, average users simply do not exist.

Artificial averaging and its consequences

In the 50s, the US Air Force conducted its famous research on the dimensions of the pilots. They measured more than 4,000 people and calculated an average size based on 140 physical characteristics: height, chest girth, and so on. Based on these 140 sets of measurements, a range of averages was established; It was hypothesized that most pilots would fall into this range. In fact, it turned out that among these four thousand there was not a single person who could fit in the average values ​​for all parameters.

Designing under the middle pilot, thus, could potentially lead to the death of people. The ergonomics of the airplanes, built on the basis of average dimensions, were so useless that they crashed. These aircraft, which were made for everyone, were ultimately not suitable for anyone .

Dilemma of guesswork design

We repeat the same mistake every day in the work on our products. We come up with a character - let's call him Ted - give him different characteristics: for example, family, successful career, home in the suburbs, two cars (you can see all this in the picture at the beginning of the article). He may even have a cat. After that, we start arguing about what Ted will like and what doesn't. “Does it really seem to you that Ted will make a similar decision in the product?” Personally, his profile tells me rather about the opposite. ”

But in fact, no one really knows how to please Ted, simply because Ted doesn't really exist. Such a statement may seem commonplace, and yet the problem is serious: the more we strive to “humanize” Ted, giving him new character traits and writing out the habits in detail, the more unconscious we turn it into a stereotype. Carried away by this process, we confuse ourselves, because we forget that this is an abstract extract from the results of user research.

Worse, with each of these unnecessarily small details with which we decorate the image of Ted, he reveals less and less similarity with the audience that we are designing the product for. With this approach to design, a non-existent personality begins to overshadow and erase real people in our perception. Often such Teds have the following characteristics: they are created somewhere in bunkers without a specific goal, remain static over time, do not change from one use case to another, and are based on artifacts that are useless for product designers and their teams.

Spectrum of characters: not fictional characters, but real motives

We need such tools that could bring to the process of product design an awareness of how diverse our audience is. Every decision we make either creates additional barriers for the activities of certain groups of people in society, or on the contrary destroys them. Universal design focuses on the fact that our responsibilities include the elimination of inconsistencies between people and products, environment, social structures. You should look for ways to check how versatile a particular design is, take measurements and maintain a balance.

So how to put real users in the first place, without resorting to artificial constructions like the "average person"? One of the methods is to destroy the characters (forgive me, Ted!) And replace them with a model with spectra. With this approach, we are not trying to describe a generalized person, but focus on a whole range of motives, contexts, possibilities, and circumstances.

The spectrum of characters is not an image of a fictional person. This is an expression of a certain motive that guides people in their actions, and observation of the groups in which it occurs. In this way, we can trace how the motivation changes depending on the context. Some characteristics are unchanged, for example, in the case of a person who has been blind since birth. At the same time, a patient who has recently had eye surgery may also experience temporary vision problems. And someone else will face the same barrier due to the nature of the environment: for example, the screen of his device will glare when working in the open sun.



Spectra of characters cannot be called an ideal technique, but still they help us build a user experience with greater equality. They use the strengths of the characters — their ability to convert abstract research results into something definite and humanized — but it does not erase the diversity in individual characteristics. Designing in accordance with the range of needs and motives, we avoid assumptions and bias, which are an integral part of any character. We tailor the design to the interests of a large number of very different users, rather than the abstract hypothetical Ted.

Spectra from an economic point of view

But the spectra of the characters is not only an exercise to train empathy. They also provide us with a business case. For example, let's imagine that you are adapting a product to the needs of people with one hand. There are about twenty thousand of them in the USA. But if we add to this number also those who currently have a broken arm or damaged wrist, as well as those who for one reason or another have only one arm (for example, young parents who carry a baby everywhere) you can easily reach the twenty millionth audience even within the country.



The Microsoft Design team is now implementing the model of the spectra of characters in the work on a whole range of products. We are seriously reviewing the purpose of our characters and their limitations in order to create products for real people in real situations. With the help of spectra, we think over and iterate the design taking into account various physical, social, economic, temporal and cultural conditions.



Physical context

Different conditions open up different possibilities, introduce different restrictions and are associated with different rules and social norms. Here are a few examples from which you can push off: At home - Outside the city - In the library - In the car - In the city center - In the bus



Social context

Different social contexts prescribe different rules, norms and behaviors. Here are a few examples from which you can push off: In solitude - With colleagues - In a crowd - With family or friends



Temporary / situational restrictions

Physical limitations are often temporary, generated by a particular situation. On this card, you can choose which restrictions are relevant for the situation in question: Does not see - Cannot speak - Does not hear - Cannot touch



Economic barriers

Budget less than 10 dollars - Lack of access to formal education and professional teachers - Minimum resources - Many students in the classroom

It is important to study the problem of universality and take people's needs into account from the very beginning of work. By collecting the opinions of real people who tell us about their motives, we can gradually grasp the entire range of human characteristics and embed it in a product, creating a design that both supports individuality and relies on the motives that unite us all. In the coming weeks, we plan to describe in more detail the process of forming our own spectrum. In the meantime, if you wish, you can familiarize yourself with our set of tools for creating a universal design.