Boot Camp: Creating Personas & Scenarios Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

2 Satisfying Your Customers: The Three Design Challenges 1. What do we need to know about customers / users? 2. How do we gather the information we need? 3. How do we make effective use of the information?

3 3-Step UI design methodology © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

4 Design method: Step 1 © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

5 Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users What do we need to know about users? © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

6 Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users How do we get the user information? Gain access to users Meet users in the right environment Prepare for the meetings Practice Guided Listening™ Create user reports Create a matrix of key user characteristics and needs © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

7 Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users How do we make effective use of the information we’ve gathered? The major problems of UI design “Many users — one user interface” Feature-creep and elastic users Who’s to say what users want? A persona* with scenarios can help solve the problems of UI design * Based on the usage of the term coined by Alan Cooper © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

8 Persona Step A. Analyze your matrix of key user needs & characteristics Persona Step B. Create a hypothetical person who has the common and most important set of needs and characteristics in the matrix Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users How do we create a persona? © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

9 Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users Persona Step A. Analyze the Matrix Assign weights to key users Make a master list of key needs © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

10 Design method Step 1: Get Key Facts about Users Persona Step B. Create a Persona “Users” are Elastic Both average and edge-case Often interchangeable with “programmer” Personas are Specific Detailed Named Hypothetical © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013 Make up a person who has the master list of key needs Remember:

11 Design method: Step 2 © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

12 Design method Step 2: Describe the Tasks the Persona Needs to Perform Create scenarios Tasks that your persona wants to accomplish The main tasks that he or she wants to accomplish Detailed, step-by-step descriptions © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

13 Design method Step 2: Describe the Tasks the Persona Needs to Perform Required Format for User Scenarios 1. Pragmatic: only scenarios that capture the primary tasks of your target users (contrast with use cases). 2. Created from the user’s perspective with user-based vocabulary that is implementation free. 3. Step-by-step format, limited to 10 steps per scenario. 4. Long tasks are chunked into a series of scenarios that are prioritized by importance to target users. 5. Scenarios are validated with users before testing begins. © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

14 Design method: Step 3 © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

15 Design method Step 3: Create a UI that enables tasks in the Scenarios Design the UI from the Top Down 1. Start by designing the screen that the user sees first 2. Individuate the tasks in the scenarios by mutual exclusivity 3. Design the main navigation for accessing the tasks from any screen 4. Design the screens for performing each task © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013

16 The Goal-Oriented Design Lifecycle © Carla Merrill, Ph.D. Chatham Design Consultants, 2013