Personas in Practice

A two hour workshop introducing Personas and their use in digital product design and development.

Intended for use by groups of 6 - 30.

Slide Deck

Slides to support the workshop are available at: https://neontribe.github.io/personas-in-practice

Requirements

• A big enough room
• A projector and screen
• Tables sufficient to split the party into groups of two or three participants
• A3+ paper sufficient for 10 sheets per group
• Large post-it notes - 1 pack per group
• A means to fix completed sheets to the walls of the room
• Marker pens

Running order

1. Introduction [5]
   • Housekeeping (optional)
   • Who's who (5 mins)
   • Session Outline (1 min)
2. Personas in Theory [10]
   • What is a "Persona"?
     • Character(fictitious) (1 min)
     • Users & Stakeholders (2 min)
     • Excercise 1: What makes up a Character? (6-7 min)
       • A shouting out and writing-down excercise
3. Personas in Creation [25]
   • How to generate personas... (3 min)
     • Collaboratively
     • Self-critically
     • Iteratively
   • Excercise 2: Generating a persona (20 mins)
     • Setup - explain task and domain (3 min)
     • Pick important factors (3 min)
     • Create Persona (10 min)
     • Show (5 mins)
4. BREAK [15]
5. Personas in Use
   • Personas as Team Communications [15]
     • Shared Creation (2 min)
     • Democratic (1 min)
     • Exposes Assumptions (1 min)
     • Persona Posters (1 min)
     • User-story Context (5 min)
     • Humanizes End-Users (1 min)
   • Personas in Scenario-Based Design [23-3375]
     • Domain (1 min)
     • Scenarios (2 min)
     • Persona + Scenario = Concept (2 min)
     • Excercise 3: Ideation
       • Given the persona from ex2 (2 min)
       • Assess the persona for relevance (3 min)
       • (opt) Create another persona (10)
       • And the following scenarios: (4 min)
         • xxxxxxxxx
       • Generate 5 product ideas in 5 minutes
       • Generate 5 product ideas in 1.5 minutes
       • Pick a favorite and tell (3 min)
   • Personas in Product Management [65-75]
     • Journey mapping (10 mins)
       • Like a storyboard or cartoon of an encounter with a product or service
       • Identifies the stages
       • Identifies "Pain Points"
       • Identify needs for research
         • Is the pain point valid?
       • Identify areas for improvement
         • The pain point yields a persona and a scenario for ideation
     • BREAK (15)
     • Excercise 4: Usability testing
       • Introduce Ollee (5 min)
       • Assess persona relevance (5 min)
       • Explore the process (15 min)
         • Explore the sign-up process on screen as a group
       • Run your persona through it. (10 min)
       • List the pain points you discover (5 min)
6. Personas Imperfect [10]
   • Not a substitute for usability testing by real users
   • Persona creation can be manipulated
     • To support a preconception
     • To be a proxy for real individuals
   • Personas can become stereotypes too easily
   • Only as good as the team's empathy