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Lesson Info

How to Create a Persona

several ways to create these persona is first of all, if you want to tackle a subject, obviously you have to gather some data and insights first. I think that's just gonna help you narrow down your scope of work, and it will help you get to a more accurate persona. So now we are going to do a quick exercise again. Um, this is a This is a verbal exercise, so just feel for you to contribute your ideas. Um, today we are going to talk about Orel health and hygiene teeth brushing. Um, I think this is something that everyone does personally. So I think everyone has a lot to contribute to this topic. Step one, gathering data and inside. So those I kind of do some homework for you has already. Let's take a look at what CDs, Eases says. So this is Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America, and what they say is nearly 1/3 of all Delta and United States have untreated tooth decay. Yikes. Um, one in seven adults aged 35 to 44 years has gum disease. This increases to one in every four a...

dults when, as they get older, so I was like, Oh, wow. Okay, um, that's a pretty jarring statistic about just teeth. Because when you think about it, you have to use your teeth every day to chew, um, and the American Dental Association and recommend sod. You should brush twice a day for two minutes with a certain type of toothpaste. Ah, you also have to make sure that you replace your toothbrush every 3 to 4 months. I know. I try sometimes missed up, Mark, but whatever. Um, you should also flaw us once a day, and I know I'm guilty because I don't loss at all. So I was like, OK, whoever, Um so that's just me. But then that this is what the data is showing, and then these are some of the insights that were gathering right. So now is time to talk about your routine. So how often have you brushed your teeth in the last six months? Is twice a day, once a day, four times a week, or I don't know even longer. Um, how often have you flaws in the last six months? What isn't good incentive for you to clean your teeth, so I'm not asking about, um, anyone else. I'm just asking about you personally. You, um for me, I think I got incentive for me. Is I will not get toothaches. Right. I will have healthy teeth. I don't have to go to the dentist. I think those are very good incentives for me. And, um, what do you find difficult in brushing teeth twice a day? What do you find difficult in flossing once a day? Wait. So just take a moment to think about it. And for our Internet audience, take a minute to think about it, and then make sure you type it into the chat room. Okay, So let's start what? Our live audience today. So who wants to start first? So how often have you brushed your teeth In the last six months and we're not judging anyone, right? We want honest answer. Totally. I'm one who brushes my teeth twice a day without fail tasa twice. Not every meal full. I'm a four times a day Russia. It means I happen. But it means I have no gums. Brushed them away. Wow. Okay. All right. So twice a day. What I you twice plus, because I actually have a toothbrush I keep next to my terminal as a reminder. Wow. Yeah, Yeah. So far so good. OK, so now let's get into So why Why do you brush it two times or more a day? Uh, it's because I fell into that statistic of having gum disease. Okay, so in order toe heel, my gums. I had to make sure it was as you're doing, John, after every meal. Because, yeah, keep the bacteria way. And if the bacteria's kept away than the guns were healthier Yeah, that's a very good and some do alright saying 2 to 3 times a day. Um and then incentives just like that. Fresh feeling, tingly feeling in your mouth. Minty, minty. Okay, Daniel, I'm pretty habitual. So definitely twice a day. And then sometimes after lunch, depending on my meal. And, um, I think the incentive is having good breath. I don't want to be that guy with bad breath. Yes, don't be that guy. We don't want to be. Oh, things stuck in my teeth. That's right. I think the bad breath is the incentive. They think it's a really awful thing, so they just want avoided at all. costs. Okay. Brushing and flossing is important to them right now. I want to ask. So is having good breath more important or is having good, healthy teeth more important? Okay, now I want to figure that out. OK, So, Lee, what about you? I think they go hand in hand. I mean, I think both of those things are important to me, for sure. I have brushed twice a day and floss one today, and, you know, I want to avoid bad breath, and I want to avoid things stuck in my teeth. But, you know, I also want to go to the dentist when it's time and, you know, have them tell me. Well, you don't have any cavities, and your gums look great. And, like, I like that reward saying, like, you've done a good job. Keep it up, you know? So I want that pay off when I go to the dentist and have my check up. I want that report back that what I've done has done some good. Your eyes. I was achievement. Definitely. Okay. Um does anyone finding Do you go? I feel like everyone here is pretty good, right? Well, like healthy brushing people. But now I wanna get into those who who have a hard time keeping up with the recommended routine, like, what are some of the frustration point that those people have saying as well, you know that? I think it's Iona and apologize if I pronounce that wrong. They're saying they find flossing actually takes too much time and hurts their gums. So although they know it's recommended, it's not something they want to do. But Elena Di is saying what she knows. They're both important, but her bad breath and things in the teeth and mawr important to her than anything else. Yeah, I feel like that's like a short term goal, right? If you have bad brother, if you have something stuck in your teeth, you immediately notice it. But it, like for teeth decay, it's more like a long term goal, like you don't really notice it on toe. It's way too late. Great. Um, so very quickly we can also figure out the needs. So what are my short term needs? My short term needs are I want to have I need to have good breath. So when I talk to people that I'm not scaring them away. Um, shorter need. I need to I want to brush my teeth so I can make sure that there's nothing stuck in here. And then when I'm talking is, like, super awkward to people, and then they don't They don't point it out to you, but you can notice their eyes just kind of fall back and forth. Um, well, for me personally, I find it I find flossing once a day. Difficult because I usually don't have the little pack of me. I have to, like, make an effort to go find it. And I have to, like, twisted on my finger, and then it hurts my finger, right? And then you turn, you see the tip turning blue because there's no blood going through it. Ronnie's just like experience that Flosses an amateur. Easier on your hands, but yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what? I want to sell anything on air, but yeah, I could for you to speak of them coming from the child that I would never have thought about because Avery saying she thinks dental forces actually bad for the environment because I suppose it is something that but it must be biodegradable. Surely? I don't know. Maybe that's a good question. Yeah, about that. That's a good question. Very interesting. Yeah, And then Okay, so what type of brushes you guys use? You gets used hand brushing has used a elect Elektronik brushing the brush. Is that just buzzing? It's because that's difficult for me, like I used on electric one. And then sometimes it runs out of battery. So I'm like, OK, I can't really do a good brushing today. I annual now. I've used pretty much all the options from the inexpensive pet brush heads that rotate and even the ones from the companies that have some sort of ultrasonic experiences. Put it that way. Yeah, and if your gums go bad, you need to speak. Step back to manual because then you could control the amount of pressure that the bristles apply to that boundary between your teeth and gums, and yeah, and you can massage it with more control. That's why you might feel like we have our expert here, because the other pain point that I find in teeth brushing is sometimes I run of the head right, and then when you run out, you have to order more. He had to wait. And then when it's when it's towards the end of its it's lifetime, the brush doesn't do a good enough job because it's all ex, just like I don't know, displayed. Um, and there's like, super weak. They don't really hold up to their shape anymore. Um, so that's my frustration, right? Anyone else who wants to share do you guys? I'll use manual manual. I think my frustration is that I never I never quite get around to being proactive about replacing my brush. It's always after the fact that deaf not you know what they recommend 3 to months of unusually past that. But it's probably just because I haven't thought to do it. And then if I'm in the drugstore, then maybe I wouldn't go, Yeah, as you grab another toothbrush. Um, but freshly in that, I guess that I'm not on top of it as much as I should in order to be, um, diligent about Do you guys check your toothbrush? You know, there's like a section of it. The longer you use it, it turns wide, so there's like it starts out with, like, full blue And then the more you use, it just turns whiter and whiter. And I feel like that's an indicator for it's time to change your toothbrush. Do you guys see it as a sign, or do you even notice it at all? What kind of work do you use that as a reminder for your zone? I don't think I'm every day checking for it, but I think one day I'll just kind of see it and be like, Oh, yeah, okay, it's time to change. Okay, Um, let's see Chapman's, I think generally, it seems manual seems to be more preferable over the electric brushes. I think for what you were saying as well, because they like the control, perhaps, and it's soft on your guns because I did have a lot of gum issues many years ago, and I was told actually just using electric brush instead. So maybe I was given bad advice. Dinner We will see. No, Um, yeah, you did. Wow. Like four days, four or five days out of the week. I used manual and then just a couple days spread out, I'll do the electronic because it does get a deeper surface clean same gun Reason I switch back to an extra extra soft using the electric. So if you really quickly knew Steve, you know, take the plaque off here in India. It works in her saying Okay, um, what about mouthwash? Do you guys use mouthwash to as, like, a three in one combo? Yes, yes, yes. Goes with the fresh breath and it can help build your enamel back up if you've lost them enamel. Do you guys use it every single day? Every other day, twice a day, every day helps get some other things. Other things loose out in between teeth. When your swishing around that maybe a toothbrush didn't get our flaws didn't get Yeah. Yeah, very nice. Um, so basically, what we did here is we can I just talk about I mean, this is obviously a group setting, but then usually what I do is I do one on one interviews because in that isn't setting when you're doing one on one is much more intimate, and that is easier to have a conversation with someone. And then there they would feel more comfortable to talk. That is also something that you should keep in mind is obviously if you're working with Internal Team and if you are interviewing, let's say, um, the marketing team and sells T right and then there is like a senior manager like the CTO is just like sitting over here. Obviously, you can get these guys to talk freely and honestly about things. So is usually is much easier to conduct some user interviews, toe one. They're like, in private setting, right, without that head of the department just hovering over them and saying like, Oh, you shouldn't be talking about about me because at the end of the day, um is more important to get the honors. Feedback is also more important to get, um, their behaviors than their intention because, um, let's talk about that. So for, for example, an intention, maybe. Oh, yeah, I do intend to floss once a day, or I intend to go to the gym twice a week. But what what what is actually happening? What is the rial behaviors like? Wow. Yeah, I skip sometimes when I'm lazy. Yeah, I don't go, Joan. One is like raining outside because I don't want the wood right, And I was like a good excuse for me to not go to the gym, right? Like that's the rial. Ah, that's to the rial data that you want to get. So definitely, um knowing how to ask questioning, knowing how to set up the environment for the for the participant to give you honest feedback is very important to, um, as a part of gathering data and insight. Hurry. So the next thing is this stealing the needs. Um, What did we find here? So we found that, at least for today's audience, um, I think there are people who prefer, um manual brush is more than Elektronik brushes. Um, we also found that, um well, at least where I think even today, I'm going back to your questions, saying about using real people as persona, right? If we're using Rodney as a persona, he is very different from me, right? And then if we're just sticking it straight to him, we might not be able to hit a lot of our market because he is someone who brushes every week. He is someone because hey has gum disease previously. Now he's trying to, like, maintain a healthy living. So he like he knows the pain already, right, and now he's trying to get back. But what if we're reaching out to an audience who don't have gum disease? So that's why they're not really thinking about it, where they're like, Yeah, I can skip brush teeth brushing once a day. I don't care. There's no consequence to me because they haven't felt the experience before, so that's very different. So we can We can say that, Um, let's see the weekends to say that maybe there are Polly three personas floating around in this room. I can kind of just just a quick generalizations. The one is one is that falls into probably running NJ Hills Lifestyle is where they really take care of their teeth so they brush is more than, um, more than twice a day because they want to definitely get all the stuff about that. Your teeth make sure nothing is like nothing stuck there in there in the haze, nothing is decaying or destroying the gum. No chance, right? And then we have maybe another set. Where it's it's about is more about the short term goals, Ray. I just want clean breath. I don't want anything to stuck in there. And then maybe there's another son of persona were they don't care about these two, but they do it because it's a routine. So that's very three very different personas. And what do we focus on? Um, so poor persona? Um, there's two different types of data that can be that can be included. So the 1st 1 is Obviously What we want to get into is, what are these people's pain points? What are their frustrations? Um, what are their expectation? Whether their knees when and their goals raise. So, for example, um pain, poise. Well, what is what is blocking me from performing an action in this product? Really? It's like Think about it. So what is blocking me? Um, what is preventing me and what frustrates me, Right. So, yes, I can I can perform that goal but is not as easy as I want it to be. And so it is the designer's job to really figure that out and just pinpoint that frustration. And if you remove that frustration off, sudden experience becomes much more enjoyable. Um, what are they expecting to dio? And if you reveal their expectation early on, or like even on the marketing page or even in the campaign messaging then and then it would sort of grab their attention, and it will click and say, Oh, yeah, you know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm trying to reach? My goal was, so of course I will use your product. Um, And then what are their needs? What is it that they need to dio rate? What is their end goal? What is their short term goal? What is their long term goal? Right. I think these air the stuff that you really need to pinpoint in a persona, Um, the supplements are there to help those those who are on the product team that are less visual people that are less imaginative, right? So location wise is like, yeah, I think is good to know whether this person is living in New York or whether those persons is living in L. A. Because it will help us define the focus better. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter that, um, someone in L. A bought a toothbrush versus someone in San Francisco about a tooth Raj like No, no, no, not really. um, location can become a big factor if you're designing a international product for, say, if we're designing for something in the United States vs something in Japan, obviously there is a cultural difference. You need to take that into consideration. That might become a factor that goes into people's that expectation and needs because people are different culturally great. So that may become one thing. And ah, language may becomes a factor in dealing with these persona. So you might even create two personas of Okay, so this person is our, um, Japanese audience. And then this one is our United States audience. Um, income, educational level again is like a supplement, so you it helps you create and visualize who this person is. So if this is someone who is making, um, over six figures, obviously they have a very different lifestyle than someone who is only making $20, a year. And then you can also be creative about what kind of car. So you drive right? Maybe this person is always driving a really old sedan, so he doesn't have the latest infotainment system system in the car. Right? Maybe this is someone who cannot afford a smartphone. Then we have this think of a different approach when we're designing that website. Um, if this is, let's say of word designing ah Yat business, right? Obviously we also kind of have to take into consideration off people's income level and then how much they can afford to spend. Um And then those two also inform the back story of a persona. So this is this is what you will see whenever you come across a persona that says, This is Sally. Sally has a dog sell the lives in an apartment with her boyfriend, right? And then she goes to work. She works at a and, um, she is a care dresser. She works at a really famous salon in Beverly Hills on sometimes she occasionally she would see a celebrity walks into their Salone rain. And then that's the back story that tells who she is and that give us her income level that give us her location. But doesn't really matter if she's a hairdresser or not. No, not really, but it helps us visualize what her pain points are. What her? What she is expecting in life, right? What are her goals and, um, what is she frustrated about? She may be frustrated about her job because she has, Ah, terrible, super needy client that comes in one day, right? And then that client, just like I hate my hair, you're doing a terrible job that might affect her mood in which it might affect how she perceives are application or our website, um, Or, for example, maybe maybe we are. Maybe we are designing a, let's say, a social network website or application, right? If Sally is a very successful person, when she is using the website, um, she may be more inclined to share because she's living a fabulous live. She's just like posting pictures. If you were, she goes right. If she's out of a really low point of her life, she might not want to share. And then she might even get jealous browsing throughout social networks. I because all her friends are doing a better job than she is right and that she wants that social acceptance. And I think it was. These are all my speculation, right? And then, after you create a persona is very important for you to test whether or not you're personas on par. So after you do your interview, you can create a persona to kind of say, Okay, these are my three provisional personas. And now I want to do another interview again to see of these three are real, and that is okay to change it is okay to update them. The these are not set in stone, right? These you can always change it. Let's say you created Persona and this person a, um one of the pain point is I can't wake up early enough in the morning, so I just skip teeth brushing right all in the morning. But maybe after some research and found out that now, actually, that is not not not the case. And you, you're more than welcome to just remove that and update the persona to someone who is more true. Tour Then who is truer to your, um, riel users. And then also, whenever you updated, feel free to, like, share with your team again. So everyone is on the same page. Okay, so let's talk about asking the right questions. Um, these air some soft skills that are definitely really useful for you to to have when you are doing user interviews. So one of the biggest thing is, while I don't know if this is the right person I'm talking to, right, And then always feel free to reach out. Always start with while. Do you know anyone else I could speak to, right. If I'm talking to saying things like, Well, yeah, I'm not really your user. Then I can say, Well, can you think of someone else who who doesn't brush twice a day and then, like, connect me with that person tens and could be like, Yeah, you know what? I do have someone to for you to talk, to write. And there you go. That's how I find my candidate for gathering insights. Um, ask open ended questions. What I mean by that is don't ask a question that end was yes or no. Right. That's just binaries. Like, Do you brush your teeth? Yes. Okay. Right. Like there. There is no insides from there. I just know Ronnie Russia's sissies like Okay, well, I would like to know more, Right. So as you phrased the questions ending, why or why not? Right. So what I asked you guys earlier is Why do you guys brush your teeth like what is a good incentive, right? Why are you doing this, then? That kind of opens up into a bigger discussion in why we brush our teeth. Um, don't ask leading questions. This one is very hard. I have to admit that sometimes I also like I might end up asking leading questions as well. So what that means is don't put the answers into your candidates mouth. Um, do you think a is better than be? Well, they have both feet be equally bad. But the way you phrase that than is more like a yes or no right then, you might say, instead of saying Would you say this feature is better than that feature you can say. Do you find this feature use full to you? Why or why not? Right then, um instead of comparing them now you are asking them about this particular feature, right? We're zoning into that feature and then ask him Well, if this is not usefully for you, can we take it out right instead of is this feature brother in the future was like, Well, I mean, I guess they're both God, like if I put this feature here, would you say you would use it is like, Wow, that's not really the right question is like, Yeah, I guess you can leave it in here. I don't care. I might use it one day, but that's not That's not helpful at all. Because if I end up not using it all that if he comes like a it becomes a a thing that just got stuck in the Web site. And that's just gonna add to the cluster that cluster of things that I would never use on that website, right? And then sooner or later, this website is gonna filled with features I don't want to use. And I might just end up using a notice side. That's way cleaner instead, Um, so the other one that I talked about before ask your behavior, Not intention. So the way I phrase it up at the beginning is well, in the last three months, right in the last six month months, how often did you actually brush your teeth? So that kind of just that gets a user start thinking, OK, so in the past six months, right? If I say, how often do you dio. How often do you cook? Is that like it is a good enough answer? Or maybe I can I can ask you while in the three in the past three months, How many times did you cook at home that you're gonna think? OK, well, in the last three months, um, there's there's November and December. December is more like holidays. I might be on break so I don't cook us much because I've been just like, eating out right? There's, like, family thing. There's friends staying holiday party. Yeah, I didn't cook that much. So, like it gives, it gives you more realistic data that you can use and clarify your assumptions. Don't assume that you know what the users talking about. Um you can always say, Oh, tell me more about that thing you just mentioned. Um, can you Can you give me more details about why you use manual toothbrush rather than electric brush? Right? Then just keep on asking them and then don't interrupt. Respect their silence because silence is silence happens because they're thinking right there, thinking about their answers, giving it back to you. Um, respect pauses. So don't just bombard them with a lot of questions because that's not gonna work there like and then if they if they're start thinking about your second question, they might have a really good answer for your first question. But because you moved on already, they missed a chance to tell you that, right? And then that might be a really good insight. Um, so these are some tips and tricks that you can use in asking the right questions. There's a lot more. I'm sure there is a lot more resource is that you can read about it online. I didn't put it in here. I think it's also helpful if you want to read up about just like if you if you look up writing, writing user interview questions, they will. There are a lot of resource is out there to help you, and then, or you can also use some kind of get into psychology a little bit right to see how psychologist asked questions about their patient. Right? How do how do you have that conversation? How do you dig information out of someone? I think those are some really good tips in finding the right candidates to conduct your interviews. All right, so we are near the end of the first segment. So now is question times. Do you guys have any questions about understanding users? We will also take questions from the online questions coming up. A lot of us, a big thank you to our truly global audience today. A 50 city in a set, ey said, How much time do you spend on creating personas about while you're designing? Either you I O u x. How much time is it? Something you need to be concerned about? Not that much, actually. Because so just a little bit of the back story on where I'm working professionally. So I work with a lot of, um, start up clients. And because of that, um, time and budget is very important because they don't have that big of a budget. So a lot of times, we sort of we squeeze it into probably like a 2 to 3 day, um, assignment for us to come up with persona. Obviously, if you're working at a bigger company or have a team that has, um that has many UX designers, that obviously I think that time can become the time for the assignment can be longer. Or you might also be working hand in hand with user researcher. Then these becomes those guys jobs, right? Or you might be a user researcher yourself. Um, so user interview wise, it's very important to keep the interview under. I was under 90 minutes, right. I think 60 to 90 minutes is a good good interview duration because you don't want to tire those people out. And, um, depending on how many candidates you're interviewing, usually I would for a specific archetype, I would probably interview 3 to 4 people to kind of get a sense of how that persona is going to be. So if let's say, if this product is touching three different types of users So you have your consumer, you have your, um let's say this is a clothing e commerce site race. So you have your consumer people who are shopping on that side. You have your, um, 30 called, um, maybe your stylist or, um, the marketing team, people who are feeding the content to that website. So people who are thinking of the latest trends people who are thinking of OK, this is on the in the next season. We need to feature plaid shirt instead of floor prints, right? Like those people can be another set of user. And then we also have maybe the order fulfillment team, right? So these three, I might I might try to find three or four users to interview for each three, so that would become 12 people. Um, if you're interviewing 12 people, you might end up to be, like a two week process just to get the scheduling done. Um, and then each person's interviews like to 90 minutes After that you will have to compile, and this still there needs to come up with the persona. So think a week to two week might be a realistic timeline for that scenario. Yeah, but I think it really depends on Dictate was also asking in other designers responsible for creating a persona. Questions and the personas or different people on different teams helped structure the questioning. Um, let's see, So usually falls on Lee shoulder of the UX designer to come up with the questions. But it's also important to, um, talk to your team first, right? Talk to your team, figuring out what we're building first done using that as a reference point to ADM or to the question list. Let's say if this if we are building a an order fulfillment system for this clothing e commerce site for me, I might even go talk to the engineering team first. To kind of figure out what sort of tech constraints are we going with, Right then I would I would probably even add, um, some technical questions in the interview. For example, What type of what type of, um, operating system are you guys using? Because that's a real important, right? Like, what do you do? You guys have WiFi in the in the factory or in the warehouse, right? How fast is your wife? I, um, and see what else? Um, the tech savviness of those order fulfilment people. Maybe there's really busy. And then they maybe they're super low tech. Maybe there really high tech. And if they're super high tag or like gray, then we can totally integrated. A lot of we can, like, have fun, really having fun with the interphase and, um, do a lot of crazy stuff if they're super low tack or if they are really less. If there really not. Not that tech savvy. Then we can say Okay, well, we'll just keep the interface simple. We'll just use words, will use less icon and just be really straightforward with it. So I think those were some of the stuff that is really helpful. Every time you create a list of questions, do a few reruns, right? Like, go find someone else on your team and say, Hey, can you take a look at these questions and make sure I'm asking the right questions? Um, I think other people will give you a fresh set of eyes and you'll end up with really good questions. I always feel like the first round of questions. I really always not good enough. So I always have someone else just double check it for me. That's great advice. Do you have any questions from our studio? Zane. Yeah, in the past of use personas for presentation and have found them to really be effective versus just showing a damn one being like, Here's the features of my product. I was wondering, like, how do you go about? Have you used personas in your presentations in your demos? Yeah. Um, persona is a great tool to talk to clients I think is super successful. When your clients are referring to you and say, You know what? I don't think Sally would uses here like, Oh my God, you're using the persona that's also right Like that means they're using. They're thinking about their users to, um, one thing that's super rewarding is when when you're presenting the persona, you see someone in the in the audience or in the client's group that said, I know exactly you someone like that in our users, right? I have that happened to me once where, um, I'm designing it for, um, let's say is I get group off, I guess, stylist, right? And then this manager person who was managing all these of these people said, You know what? I know exactly who you're talking about, and I can even put a name and a face onto that persona. Then, at that point, you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, We just hit the right mark Absolutely so much better than just showing the hairs of my features of this product. It's Yeah, it works a lot better. Yeah, because if you are, if you're demoing and feature. Obviously, you need to give give a reason behind it. Right Then this is also we're gonna go into our next segment talking about importance of storytelling in you X. And then this is also one you should be really using your personas.