Human-Computer Interaction

saadh.info/hci

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Week 5 (Thursday): User Profiles, Personas

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Attendance and Agenda

1. User Profiles
2. Personas
3. Scenarios

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Announcements

• Assignment 1 due on 24th now
• Details on Canvas
• Continue making progress on projects
• Start considering the platform, user, application features, etc.
• Milestone 1 due on October 11
• Test 1?

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Thematic Analysis

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Affinity Mapping

1. Create affinity notes from your atomic observations, write in first person easy language
2. Add several (usually 100s) affinity notes to the diagram
3. Organize the affinity notes by similarity, reorganize hard to label items
4. Add the bottom level of labels above the affinity notes
5. Add the temporary top level of labels and reorganize the bottom level of labels and affinity notes to fit them
6. Remove the temporary top level labels
7. Add the middle level of labels
8. Add the top level of labels

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What have we learned so far in this module?

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Interviews

Contextual Inquiry

(and Surveys)

Thematic Analysis

Affinity Mapping

User Profiles

Personas

Scenarios

Collect

Analyze

Communicate

User Analysis

• Purpose
• To identify all categories of intended users
• To identify specific needs of users so that the system can be tailored for them
• Informs user interface requirements

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• Artifacts of process
• Create a User Profile
• Create Personas
• Scenarios

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User Profile

• Capture key attributes and characteristics of your users

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• Inform your design

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• Who are the target users
• Their purposes
• Their backgrounds
• Their technical issues

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User Characteristics

• User populations may be characterized on a wide range of variables
• Age
• Education
• Abilities
• Social Status
• Expert vs. Novice
• Culture (Societal, Corporate)

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• These and other user characters may affect the way they interact with a system

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Interviews and Observations

• Recall from the last two weeks

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• Important takeaway is that you need to observe and talk to real users

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• Don’t rely on secondhand data

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Identifying Primary and Secondary User

• Primary User (or simply “user”)
• Use the “system directly”
• Most important influencer of your design

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• Secondary user
• Don’t use the system directly but may be influenced by it or have influence over it
• Manger reading a report generated by employee using the system or executive or manager who decides which system will be install but may never use it
• They may be concerned about such issues as efficiency, cost, time to install, and safety

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User Analysis

• Construct your User Profiles by gathering detailed information to answer the following questions

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• What are the traits, abilities, preferences, and attitudes that the identified sets of users most likely will exhibit?

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• What are the users’ information needs and how can we help them?

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Take Note of User Characteristics

• Goals
• Age
• Culture
• Physical Abilities
• Education
• Comfort level with technology
• Motivation: why are they doing what they are doing?
• Attitudes (“I hate learning new software”)
• Satisfaction

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Physical Environment

• Noise Level
• Setting (outdoors, small room, school room, hospital patient room, hospital office, desert, forest, etc…)
• Physical workspace
• Equipment used
• Hazards
• Distractions

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Get the bigger picture

• Domain (health care, aerospace, food service, etc.)
• Social and Political Environment
• Individualism, collaboration
• Organizational structure
• Who makes decisions? How much autonomy do users have?
• Support environment
• User out working on their own (home health care)? IT support infrastructure?

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Identify User Groups

• Determine how your user groups vary
• Some characteristics won’t vary among your user population.

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• Once you have identified characteristics among your user groups which vary, you must decide which of these are relevant to your system/design

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Example ATM User Analysis

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User Profile Example

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Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe , M., & Minocha , S. (2005). User Interface Design and Evaluation . Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

User Profile Example

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Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe , M., & Minocha , S. (2005). User Interface Design and Evaluation . Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

User Profile Example

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Stone, D., Jarrett, C., Woodroffe , M., & Minocha , S. (2005). User Interface Design and Evaluation . Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Translating into UI Requirements

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Process of creating a User Profile

• Define the context within which the user will work

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• Generate a list of user categories

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• Determine a set of user characteristics, or traits, abilities and/or tendencies, that are most likely exhibited by a user classified into each category

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• Set optimal product design requirements for each user category (e.g., how things might best be designed/implemented/presented to individuals classified in each category)

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Class Exercise

• Identify the primary demographic segments of
• PlayStation 5: Age?, Fitness vs. Gamers?, Family/Social Users vs. Solitary Users?, Genre preference (arcade, 1st-person shooters, fitness)?
• Apple Smartwatch:
• Instagram
• Canvas

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What are personas?

• Idealized presentation of a single group of users with enough richness for a “designer” to understand who their design choices will effect and how.

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• Personas are tools that helps focus the stakeholders, project, and project team.

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• They are not real people.

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• They’re Imaginary examples

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Personas

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Director at a company who is a frequent traveler looking for a booking app

Graduate student looking for apartment furnishing ideas

Personas

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Creating Personas

• Use the categories created in your user profiles

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• Create one general persona for the entire product

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• Create at least one persona per category

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• Focus on “real people” interacting with your product
• Motivated to do real specific “tasks”?
• What they do?
• What difficulties do they run into?
• How they react?

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Designing a Persona

Name: Give your personas a name!

Team will start to use the name during everyday meetings and discussion “How would Rachel use this?” Consider using alliterative names that describe the persona: Teach Me Tina, Desktop Dan, Remote Ron, Know-it-all Allen

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Picture: Stock photo or sketch. Visual will help memory

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Catchphrase or tagline: “I’m afraid when I’m alone, I need a secure place to get my money.”

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Who: Age , gender, education, experience (internet and computer), occupation, language and nationality, interests, aspirations etc.

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Context: When, where (work, home, other), activities, situation, environment

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Technical: Computer (speed, browser, monitor, etc.), connection (ISP, modem, broadband), available devices, screen sizes, battery life, etc.

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Emotion: Behaviors demonstrated in context driven by scenarios

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Details to Include

• What
• Purpose, expectations

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• Motivation
• Attitude, response to pressure

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• Robustness
• Timid/aggressive, bold/safe, error phobic/error tolerant

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How many?

• Some industry projects: up to 30 personas

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• Usually 3-5

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• “Cast of characters” plus one primary persona

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• At least one per user group identified in User profile

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Sources of Information for User Profiles & Personas

• Previous observational studies

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• Current user demographic data from online profile

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• Online survey data

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• Internal marketing research

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• Sales data

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Four Common Mistakes

• Not believable: It should not be obviously designed by committee (not based on data) or be one of them or relationship to data not clear

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• Not communicated well: It should not be resume-like documented printed poster size and posted in a hallway. Images and narrative help with memory

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• Not relevant to all team members: Must relate to all disciplines or stages of project

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• No high-level support: Need personnel for creating and promoting personas, budget for posters or other materials to make Personas visible, or encouragement from team leaders to user the character

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Scenarios

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Next Time

Attendance & Next Time

• Scenarios

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• Prototyping

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