Personas: Our Imaginary Friends

Personasour imaginary friends

BUZZ WORDSStart up

Lean UX Agile

Pivot Innovative

A brief history of personas

Angus Jenkinson 1993

“CustomerPrints

Alan Cooper 1995-99

“Personas”

–Kim Goodwin, “Perfecting your Personas” 2008

“Personas represent behavior patterns, not job descriptions.”

My reasons to avoid personas

They aren’t created from real dataNo collaboration

Confused with customerNot used

Not validated

Here’s what we did

Product core team

Product managerDesignerLead developer

Persona 1

6, 8, 5

Persona 2 !

11, 3

Basic timeline

Week 1 Week 2

Plan Interview - 6 daysProcess data

Document

Brendan

2.5%

13.5%

34% 34%

16%

Gus

Innovators Early adopters Early majority Late majority Laggards

One more thing.Changing conversations

Comics and stories

Story mapping

Design studios

Critiques

“I was able to leave the store and attend my daughter’s Tae Kwan Do for the first time because now I have help - thanks to Snagajob.“

Lesson learnedBringing imaginary friends to life

Product core team

Made from real data

Put personas to work

Don’t stop observing customers

Essential Reading

!Designing for the Digital Age:

How to Create Human-Centered Products and

Services !

by Kim Goodwin

User Story Mapping!Discover the Whole

Story, Build the Right Product

!By Jeff Patton

The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web

by Steve Mulder, Ziv Yaar

@archiemiller

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Design