Using Personas to Gain Understanding and Focus
How Can Global Voices Use Personas to Move Forward?
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Global Voices is asking its community to engage in defining its future path. Are we a community? Are we news? Are we media? All of the three? Something we have not yet imagined? The community council brings together a range of people with deep roots in Global Voices, including some of the founding members. It also brings together more recent members, without in-depth knowledge of the organization’s history and mission.
One way to look at the future, may be to employ design practices pioneered by Alan Cooper and the interaction design team (UX, Human Centered Design, whatever you call the discipline today) at Cooper Interaction Design. Those practices bring together research, communication, persona development, and design. As an early member of the Cooper team, I saw how powerful and prescient the process was. I have done my best to employ the process in communication work since then.
tldr:
No one can design for everyone. Specificity is what makes a product or service appealing. Taking time for research and persona development can ensure that what you want to offer is specific enough to be interesting. This article discusses the process further.
Personas bring the mission to life
The pressing questions facing Global Voices are what and who. What will we be in ten years and who are we trying to reach? What can we do best and who are we?
Developing personas can help answer these questions.
Personas are fictional characters that represent segments of the target audience. They help to better communicate an understanding of the audience. Personas are not averages, but archetypes. There is just enough detail in persona descriptions to make them seem like real people, but not so much that they are quirky.
Even when working in a new domain, it is possible to develop a deep understanding of the people involved by combining research and persona development. I’ve seen this time and time again. I’ve worked on projects with audiences as specific as chemical buyers for the paint and coatings industry to as wide as people who use online photo services. In each case, the clients were surprised by the depth of knowledge of their audience that the personas revealed.
What do Rollaway Suitcases, a Moby Song, and Denim Jeans have in Common?
Hint: they were all created with someone in mind.
Understanding the target audience well and specific people who make up that audience produces surprisingly effective results. This is repeated time and again. For instance, roll-away suitcases were designed specifically for flight crews, but it turns out that we all can use them. Denim jeans were designed for gold prospectors, but that does not stop us from wearing them. Moby writes songs with one specific person in mind, and his music is among some of the highest selling music of all time.
Here is what Moby had to say about his process in the March 17, 2002 issue of the NYT magazine:
“It’s weird, maybe, but every song I write, I imagine this specific kind of person who is listening to it alone, always alone, sitting by himself or herself,’’ he said. ‘’I have written a song where I imagine it’s being listened to by a woman who’s just come home from a hard day’s work and finally has a moment to herself. I’ve written a song where it’s a student in Germany on a train, coming home from school for the holidays.’’
Knowing who will eventually use the product being designed whether it is a website, a software application, a song, or a physical product keeps teams focused and productive. A clear understanding of the target audience helps to build consensus quickly.
So how do we start?
Start with Empathy and Understanding
Frankly, not everyone is cut out to develop personas. Here are some characteristics that could lead to creating good personas:
- Listening without judgment
- A love for fiction and reading
- Experience writing fictional characters or actual biographies
- Multi-generational life experience
- An ability to set aside your own personality to understand others
- Curiosity
Continue with Research
One of my favorite design research stories illustrates that people often cannot verbalize what they need. A product development company asked people with limited mobility how their walkers could be improved. No one had any ideas. Yet, nearly all of them had made modifications to their own walkers:
Yet when the group members were excused and got up to leave, the researchers saw that several participants had rigged home-made carrying pouches to their walkers, ranging from a bicycle basket tied with shoe strings to an automotive cupholder. A good researcher lets the information tell a story instead of imposing a story on the information. This is a key difference and not as simple or as clear cut as it sounds. (From: When sparks fly: Igniting creativity in groups)
Although most of us won’t ever be as good at observation as Sherlock Holmes, there are things we can do to improve our research skills. This includes reading, interviewing, and observing.Research with design in mind means combining skepticism and innocence. It demands listening to what people do and do not say.
Ask Yourself Questions
Working with a partner and sharing observations can make the process go even faster. At the end of every day spent on research answer the following questions together:
- What recommendations would we make based on what we learned today?
- What do we need to know more about?
- What questions can we ask that will help us discover more?
- What’s missing?
Look for Patterns and Outliers
Researching for design can use traditional methods of narrative research, surveys, observation, and literature reviews. In the analysis it’s important to look for patterns and for the outliers that break the patterns. Outliers are particularly important when it comes to design. They can show the way forward.
Patterns are part of everything we do and build. When we do research, we look for similarities in what we hear, observe, and read. What is connected to what?
Codes are a way of visualizing the patterns and turning patterns into statistics. This requires an initial identification of the patterns and then naming these patterns. The coding process requires at least 2 people. It requires several reviews of the material to be sure you have the fewest named codes necessary to describe the patterns without ignoring anything.
When something doesn’t fit a pattern, it may be an outlier. Outliers fall far outside of the statistical norm. For design, outliers can be more important than the norm.
For more information on research practices for design, please read: Extracting Meaning from Research.
Create a Mental Model
Have you seen the elaborate models some fictional detectives use to visualize and put together evidence? Images, articles, strings crossing from wall to wall and picture to picture? I love those.
When you are doing research for personas, it’s useful to learn to do this inside your own head. Ask yourself how the research is helping you understand the people and imagine the future. How is it helping you re-imagine the end product? This is very important and very difficult.
You can practice your mental modeling skills by imagining something you know very well. Take it apart and put it together using your brain alone. Practice as much as you can!
The science fiction writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker has all sorts of stories of using mental models/imagination to imagine four-dimensional spaces. His book, The Fourth Dimension, is online for free.
Turn all this into a persona
Write a persona like a character. Think about these things when making your sketch:
- Demographic info: i.e., gender, age, nationality, education, etc
- What characteristics are salient for the particular project? For instance what about this persona is interesting for Global Voices to know?
- What does the persona hope to achieve?
- How does Global Voices help the persona?
- Why would the persona interact (or not) with Global Voices?
- What does this persona want to do with the interaction?
- A picture and a name: these are helpful.
When I worked at Cooper Interaction Design, we employed a method called Goal-Directed Design. Essentially, each persona had a set of goals. We would design for one persona with one set of goals. When the goals of the personas differed, we knew that different designs were necessary. This is a very powerful tool.
Let me give an example from a project I worked on for a new pharmaceutical. From our research, we knew that people with chronic diseases would become as expert — or even more expert — than trained healthcare professionals. They learned the language. They read the research. Their goals were the same as healthcare professionals. As a result, they would seek out the same information. There was no need to create two sites with two different sets of information for caregivers and people with chronic diseases. One was enough. On the other hand, people newly diagnosed and those caring for them (family/friends) needed a completely different interaction with different information.
Don’t Forget to Share
It’s not enough to go through the motions of creating personas. The personas won’t work if the logic for creating them is not communicated to the team. They won’t work if their descriptions are not shared with and embraced by the team.
In the best cases, the team has a poster of the personas pinned to the wall by their desk. They are continually reminded of who they are creating content for, who they are designing for, and why they are doing it.
Many might feel uncomfortable and awkward using personas at first. Some may resist the use of personas completely. But if people can make a small effort, a tiny leap of faith, then personas can be a great tool. They streamline conversations and focus ideas. Using them gives diverse teams common ground.
In conclusion, don’t just develop personas, use them and share them.
Ask me questions about anything unclear.
I’d love to hear from you.
Resources:
Egherman, T., & Anderson, G. (2018, March 21). Extracting Meaning From Research. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@etori/extracting-meaning-from-research-1cb4304d22b7
Kraus, C. (n.d.). Inside Goal-Directed Design: A Two-Part Conversation With Alan Cooper. Retrieved from https://www.cooper.com/journal/2014/04/inside-goal-directed-design-a-two-part-conversation-with-alan-cooper
Leonard, D. A., & Swap, W. C. (2005). When sparks fly: Igniting creativity in groups. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.
Marzorati, G. (2002, March 17). All by Himself. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/magazine/all-by-himself.html
Rucker, R. (n.d.). The Fourth Dimension. Retrieved from http://www.rudyrucker.com/thefourthdimension/
Blast from the Past: Thoughts on Rafsanjani's 2005 Campaign
I wrote this piece in 2005 when the elections for Iran's next president were in full swing. During the campaigns, I walked through my neighborhood with my headscarf around my shoulders. Music blared from black SUVs. A three-story banner of former president Rafsanjani graced the corner building that housed some of his campaign staff. It was a strange time and a bit of a break from the relentlessness of the Islamic Republic. You'll note I don't even mention Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His campaign was nearly invisible in Tehran. It wasn't until the run-offs that I noticed his candidacy. This was originally published on Marketing Profs.
The Hashemi Brand in Iran's 2005 Elections
The elections in Iran are in full force, with only a few days left until the Friday ballot. Iranian television is filled with interviews with the candidates, sound bytes and advertisements about the vote. Movies are interrupted every few minutes by voting reminder message; in the middle of intense emotional scenes, bells ring and an animated ballot dances across the screen.
Candidates' web sites tout the politicians' credentials and attributes, while blogs debate who is genuinely democratic-minded--or, conversely, true to the tenets of the Islamic Revolution.
The presidential campaign in Iran is short: about one month. There are a lot of rumors and discussions before the official start of the campaign season, but it really goes into gear once the Supreme Council announces the list of approved candidates. This year there are six.
One of the candidates, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (www.hashemirafsanjani.ir), has done more than the others to market his particular presidential brand. In this brief article, I discuss the tools that his campaign has used to create the Hashemi brand.
Guerilla Marketing
Jay Conrad Levinson is often called the father of guerilla marketing. He defines it this way: "It is a body of unconventional ways of pursuing conventional goals. It is a proven method of achieving profits with minimum money."
While I cannot speak for the actual costs of the Rafsanjani campaign, the methods that the campaign is using are, indeed, unconventional. They are particularly unconventional for post-revolutionary Iran.
The Rafsanjani campaign has employed Iran's hip youth as its army of unpaid campaign workers. They wrap themselves in Hashemi stickers, tape his poster on their backs, celebrate soccer success in his name, attend performances at the candidate's Tehran headquarters and participate in skating events. They wear Rafsanjani campaign materials like fashion accessories.
This army of hip youth may be politically apathetic in large part, but that does not really matter. The Rafsanjani campaign has grabbed the image of youth and energy for itself. You might say that the Rafsanjani generation and the Pepsi generation are one. In other words, it may not matter to Pepsi whether the Pepsi generation drinks Pepsi, as long as Pepsi's sales are robust; similarly, as long as Rafsanjani wins the election, who cares who voted for him.
The Graphic Image
Rafsanjani is his own brand. Because of his uncommon looks, he is, arguably, the most recognized cleric in the world. As with every other candidate in Iran's presidential election, his image covers entire walls.
The campaign puts forth several images of Rafsanjani: the official site features a photo album [no longer available] that highlights his revolutionary achievements, while the popular photo-sharing site Flickr displays a very different view of the candidate.
The posters with his image are conservative and traditional, while the popular Hashemi sticker is really quite radical. On it, the Iranian flag is reduced to an abstract mark. His name, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is reduced to Hashemi.
In a country where wives often call their husbands by formal names like Engineer (Mohandes) or Mister (Agha) and young girls are often called Little Miss (Dokhtar Khanum), the use of a name other than the surname is more than familiar: it is intimate.
With the plastering Hashemi stickers on ankles, across foreheads and on motorcycle windscreens, the Rafsanjani brand has come to mean that it is offering intimacy and friendship.
Will It Work?
Only time will tell how truly effective the Rafsanjani campaign has been. One thing is for certain: Political campaigns in Iran have changed. The Rafsanjani campaign is just one of the many signs of that change. (Check out the Flickr photo tag Election84 for a sense of this visual election.)
The campaign of former police chief Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who is number two or three in the running, also targets the youth. With his casual and stylish clothes, chic glasses, and sponsors such as Efes Zero Alcohol beer, the Qalibaf campaign directly competes with the Rafsanjani campaign for the hearts of Iran's youthful population.
The biggest difference between the two marketing styles is this: Rafsanjani's campaign is fueled by the images of teenagers and 20-somethings wrapped in Hashemi accessories, while Qalibaf's marketing team has chosen to make the candidate himself the symbol of youth with his new fashionable outfits and attractive image.
We'll Be Watching
It isn't just the presidential candidates who are seeking to brand and re-brand themselves--it's the entire country of Iran.
Plans are in the works for a tourism campaign that will target CNN's international audience. Payvand News reports that the country is ready for foreign tourists and investors.
Well, we'll be watching.
Five Tips for Super-Charging Creative Teams
There is a lot of hype about design and creativity in big out there. Teams should be filled with oddballs and wanderers. They should be given permission to play and to fail (or iterate, depending on who is writing). Bring in philosophers and engineers, writers and office managers. The more diverse the points of view, the better. These articles share one common characteristic, and it isn't insight. They are like the written version of candy. Sweet and easily digestible but essentially empty.
When I read the articles I feel like they are written by people who have very little experience with teamwork. They seem to be tourists in the land of the creative team, barely skimming the surface of what it means to be either creative or part of a creative team.
I've been working in teams most of my life now, and at times it's been difficult, disappointing, frustrating, and exciting. I remember listening to a bunch of museum directors wax poetic about the powers of ideas, when, in reality, ideas are the easiest thing to come by for any creative team. It's challenging those ideas and the hard work of making them take shape that's difficult.
Here is an overview of what I've learned over the years.
1. It takes two to tango. My experience shows that the best teams are small -- teams of two, in fact. Any larger and you need a project manager.
2. Survival of the loudest. Research shows that teams are most likely to follow the first one to speak -- the extrovert, the bossiest, the most (over) confident. This has certainly been my experience with teamwork over the years and accounts for the multiple ways in which it's been a failure.
3. Shared leadership makes for a productive team. In a team of two leadership is shared. Ideas are shaped and reworked in a truly collaborative and exciting manner. The team of two has room for reflection, introversion, and iteration. I learned this working at Cooper in the late 1990s.
4. Teams of two have super powers. Given the right support a small team can get work done quickly and efficiently. Think of how hard it is to make decisions about dinner or a movie with a group of people. Now imagine how much more effective a team of two can be at solving problems and creating innovative design.
5. Successful multi-tasking is a myth. I think we all know what happens when we multi-task. Nothing gets full attention. Living in a world filled with stimuli makes that painfully obvious. Team members should be allowed to focus on their work, one problem at a time. And I don't need to tell you to close Facebook, do I?
The Force of the Small Team is Strong
When I look back at the work I did with my team partners way back in the caveman days of the internet, I don't cringe. It's definitely withstood the test of time. There's work we did over a decade ago that could be implemented today with little or no revision. Unfortunately, most of the work was for start-ups that never implemented it -- perhaps because it was too innovative for the time. We designed a purchasing application for media buyers with data visualizations that I'd love to have today. There was the planning application for manufacturers that allowed them to collaborate all along the supply chain, but was seen as too revolutionary by the software giant that requested it. Trust me, they have learned since that those ideas were not at all revolutionary but instead filled an existing and real need.
The Yin and Yang of a Good Team
A good team needs two types of people: one should be good at generating ideas and the other should be good at riffing on them. At least one member of the team needs to be empathetic -- able to embody other people. One should be a good writer. The other should be able to draw. At least one needs to understand what's possible and have a handle on the limitations.
Both need to be able to listen.
They need to be people who love puzzles. People who can see and understand the outlier. People who can anticipate the future.
Both team members should be capable of creating mental models -- envisioning the whole problem and using that vision to create design work. I often tell people to practice creating mental models on something they already know well: their bedroom, their motorcycle, their neighborhood. One team member may be better than the other, but both should have an idea.
Support Your Teams
To be really successful, the team should be embedded in a supportive organization with other teams working on similar and different problems. That way when they hit a snag, they can grab others to help them untangle it. They shouldn't be alone.
They need administrative support. They need the help of others who can make appointments, smooth ruffled feathers, proofread, and other essential tasks. The team shouldn't be expected to do it all -- even though they often are.
You Can't Do it Alone
Good design is just good design if there's no buy-in.
There are times to bring in larger groups. The design team needs the support of engineers, marketing, the works. Those people should be brought in regularly to increase buy-in. You can't leave them out and expect the work to succeed on its own merit.
The work needs to be built. Its value may be clear to you and your teammate, but it still needs to be sold to the others. You'll be most successful if you ask for help at key moments. By doing so, you give others outside the team a sense of ownership. They can and will bring ideas that are useful. They may have key insights that will surprise you. While you may not want to spend eight hours a day at the whiteboard with them, an hour or two here and there can go a long way to making the work successful.
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