IxDworks.com; personas, scenarios, user stories.

1. Personas, scenarios and user stories
Tallinn Summer School / IxDworks.com
Understanding Users

2. http://v2.centralstory.com/about/squiggle/
We are here Heading here

3. Users

4. Imaginary personas
a 28-year old
waitress on a
maternity leave
69-year old, retired
engineer, who enjoys
exploring outdoors
with his wife
15-year old student,
who likes long boards,
pool and girls
Hanna Takashi Marco

5. Imaginary personas
Different
Age
Gender
Buying habits
Income level
Household size
Family life cycle
Attitudes
etc...

6. Same?

7. From interaction point of view
even very different people
could have similar goals.

8. A way to go around

9. Semi-private space

10. Efficiency of interaction
/ Relaxation

11. Forecast for planning

12. Persona’s goals
to be able to:
... move around easily
... retreat to a (semi) private space
... communicate and seek fundamental
information on the move
... predict conditions and plan daily activities
solutions A, B, C ....

13. Sometimes goals are more specific

14. Navigation
dashboard?

15. Table
management?

16. Training
tracking?

17. UX & Goals

18. “User experience is a
stream of passing
momentary feelings”
– M. Hassenzahl

19. Be-goals, experience
Hedonic; feeling/being
e.g.
Relax
Look cool
Remain focused
Be independent
Be loved
“A constant
stream of self-talk”
– Forlizzi & Battarbee

20. Experience goals
Hedonic; feeling/being
e.g.
Look cool
Become admired
Remain focused
Get rich
Be loved
Do-goals, actions
Pragmatic; doing
e.g.
Post a Tweet
Look up a place
Set up a website
Play a game
Close Facebook account

21. A user experience occurs when a person
interacts with a product.

22. Do-goals,
actions
Tasks
Be-goals,
experiences
Share a photo 1.Take photo
2.Add info
3. Upload
4. Preview
Self-expression

23. • Foundation for the design
• Ground for discussion
• A “reality check”
• Empathy
• Easier to relate
(than to e.g. flow chart)
Why goals?

24. Towards User Personas
& Storytelling

25. We can’t ask users to be with
us all the time, thus we make
user models.

26. Persona
• Describes (your app’s) imaginative users archetypes.
• Is based on the real research and observation.
• Shows user goals and their behavior patterns
• Helps to crack “what” and “why” questions
• Primary, secondary, supplemental, non-persona

27. Fake persona
• Stereotype or a
caricature
• Can’t be backed up
• Factoids
• Fun, but often useless

28. Persona
• Used as an aid to help express, discuss and
validate design questions and decisions, e.g.
• Would the persona (“Bob”) use this?
• Is this logical?
• Does this make sense to this persona?
• Is it fun / exiting / motivating... ?
• Bob would not like this, because....

30. Sources
Primary Secondary
Personal know-how
Stakeholders
Online discussions
Domain experts
Informed guesses
Feedback
Surveys
Contextual inquiry;
Talking to people directly,
Observing their behavior
*Bonus

31. •Talk to people who a different
from you and what you know
already
•Look for reoccurring issues and
trends, language (lingo), surprises...
•Acknowledge your biases and be
open-minded

32. Persona documentation
• Helps to communicate persona to other stakeholders
• A document might include e.g.
• background info: age, gender, occupation
• mapping, such as technical skills
• a short description of an activity, that is related to the
current context or problem settings and frustrations
• goals

33. A business card.

34. Example template, yours can look different!
Background Bio
Name, (age), (role), occupation, education
Photo(s)
Description
E.g. use environment or context, where the problem occurs
and current solutions and frustrations.
Goals
• What are the user’s end goals?
• 2-4 end goals and 0-1 life goals is enough
for this workshop
Mapping
E.g. computer
skills, necessity vs
fun, quality vs
price.

35. Example template, yours can look different!
Petter Tamm
44, botanic garden worker, father of two children
Goals
• Wants to manage bulk orderings more efficiently
• Is looking for quality reviews about new products
Reads reviews to
find best...
quality price
As a lead gardener, Petter is responsible in ordering
nutritions and specific soil for the plants for the
city’s botanic garden. Currently he has to do
bi-weekly orders over the phone from his office,
calling manufacturers one by one.

36. Before moving on
define “what” of your project
What need does it serve?

37. Scenarios

38. Scenarios
• Stories that help understand interactions
• A cheap way to illustrate design solution
from user’s (persona’s) point of view
• Tell user’s goals, motivations and actions
“What should this product do?”
“How would user behave in this context?”
“What if...?”

39. Scenarios
• without your solution present-based
• Focus is set on current practices that illustrate
‘state of the art’ and the problem context
• with your solution future-based
• Focus on how problems could be addressed
(without diving into much details).
Scopeofwork

40. It’s Friday afternoon. Petter opens his desktop
computer at the botanic center’s office. He wants
to be quickly done with the extra flower soil orders.
Petter decides to order the same combination of
products as four weeks ago, but in smaller quantity. He
does not order nutritions this time.
Petter is not interested in staying at the office long.As
soon as the order is done, he leaves work to pick his
daughter from school.
Context-based scenario

41. It’s Friday afternoon. Petter opens his desktop
computer at the botanic center’s office. He wants
to be quickly done with the extra flower soil orders.
Petter decides to order the same combination of
products as four weeks ago, but in smaller quantity. He
does not order nutritions this time.
Petter is not interested in staying at the office long.As
soon as the order is done, he leaves work to pick his
daughter from school.
Story background, settings Goal “extra orders, quick”
Motivation: efficiency
High level actions
(e.g. re-ordering x with changes, not ordering y.)

42. • In what settings will the product be used?
• Is the persona frequently interrupted?
• With what other products will it be used?
• What primary activities does the persona need to
perform to meet her goals?
• What is the expected end result of using the product?
etc.

43. Use Cases/
User Stories

44. Use Cases
A step-by-step, often
detailed description of
product’s behavior, which
helps the user (and
other actors) to achieve
a result.
Components:
Use Case,Actors, Steps
Success Condition: what is considered a successful end to the use case
Failure Condition: what is considered a failed end to the use case

45. Steps / Basic course of events
1. Check what has been ordered before.
2. Renew a previous order.
3. Modify the order to suit current situation.
4. Place the order.
Alternative course of events
In step 1. check favorite orders.
Use Cases
Simple example
Use Case – Ordering extra soil.
Actor – Petter / botanic garden worker

46. User Stories
A simple, easily readable
description of a specific
user need.
As a (persona/role)
I want to do (what),
so I can benefit (how).
As a botanic garden worker
I want to order extra soil.
Original model popularized by Mike Cohn,
Screenshot: ScrumDesk

47. Condition details
User Stories
Epic / Saga user stories
Theme user stories
User stories with clear conditions of satisfactions
Theme user stories
Theme user stories

48. Condition details
Epic / Saga
user stories
User stories with clear
conditions of satisfactions
As a gardener
I want to quickly order extra soil.
... to see previous offers.
– Condition: similar to the new offer
... to modify the order.
... to submit a new order.
etc.
As a gardener
I want to order soil.
Theme user stories

49. Today’s “To Do”

50. Today’s To Do
Add notes to your blog
1. Discuss and describe 1 primary persona
2. Write 1-2 scenarios based on persona’s goal
• How would persona use your solution?
3. Write few user stories OR an use case(s) based on
the scenario(s)

51. Resources
• Cooper,Alan, Reimann, R & Cronin, D. (2007) About Face 3:The essentials of interaction design.Wiley; ISBN:
0470084111
• Hinton,Andrew. Personas and the Role of Documentation. (2008) http://boxesandarrows.com/personas-and-
the-role-of-design-documentation/
• Accessibility in User-Centered Design http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas.html
• Hassenzahl, M. (2008). User Experience (UX):Towards and experiential perspective on product quality. http://
www.researchgate.net/publication/
238472807_User_experience_(UX)_Towards_an_experiential_perspective_on_product_quality/file/
60b7d51bf4873231da.pdf
• What research methods could I use to create personas? http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/21891/what-
research-methods-can-i-use-to-create-personas
• Personas http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Persona+Categories
• Mike Cohn. http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles?tag=user%20stories
• Stellman & Green. Building better software. http://www.stellman-greene.com/2009/05/03/requirements-101-
user-stories-vs-use-cases/
• User Story map http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-to-create-user-story-map.html

52. Images
• A women with a child https://www.flickr.com/photos/eraphernalia_vintage/3184104746/sizes/o/
• Senior couple https://www.flickr.com/photos/thepismire/3238750476
• Longboard boy https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcogomes/787647547/sizes/o/
• Ramps https://www.flickr.com/photos/borkazoid/4202740785/sizes/l
• Mobile Cubicles https://www.flickr.com/photos/alpha600/3255806387/sizes/o/
• Mobile device https://www.flickr.com/photos/ebayink/6816581064/sizes/l
• Boat https://www.flickr.com/photos/time-to-look/14551961151/sizes/l
• Restaurant https://www.flickr.com/photos/en321/9908577253/sizes/l
• Girls with ice-creams https://www.flickr.com/photos/pbaitor/4998329309/sizes/l
• Woman in hospital bed https://www.flickr.com/photos/uhduh/12242998/sizes/l
• Girl with a phone https://www.flickr.com/photos/brandoncwarren/2952179726/sizes/l
• Men on a bench https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottrsmith/6194527237/sizes/l
• Woman at ATM https://www.flickr.com/photos/betsssssy/435300495/sizes/l
• User Case Map http://www.batimes.com/articles/user-stories-and-use-cases-dont-use-both.html