Using research, personas and scenarios to get to know your users

Editor’s Note: In this, the second installment of our series on good design, Yahoo! design researcher Michael Bartholomew discusses the importance of getting to know your users, and shows you how to do it yourself.

Publishers face difficult decisions when designing their web sites. Often, design decisions are based on what publishers assume to be true about their end-users. However, to ensure the successful design of a web site, design decisions should be based on valid information, not assumptions, about users.

For example, I recently worked on a design team that was charged with redesigning a web site for auto enthusiasts. Before deciding upon a design direction, we met with marketing analysts who provided us with data indicating that our target audience was primarily males between the ages of 18 and 35. We found out that this group of primarily young males loved going to car shows to show off their cars, see examples of other people’s cars, and find parts to customize their own cars. So we brought that experience to online, bringing it to life by letting users post pics of the latest cars and custom trends. We kept the background dark to make the thumbnails jump out. And we made sure to organize the site so that it was easy for these young auto enthusiasts to find what they needed for their next customization.

Know thy user…and know that you are not your user
This adage from the school of user-centered design encompasses the core philosophy of this approach to design: involve the user in the design process from the get-go. Most major Internet companies hire researchers to perform interviews and tests that captures feedback from end-users early in the web design process. Designers then incorporate the feedback gathered from users to make improvements to the interface—improvements that can increase the chance of a user taking the sort of action you want, such as clicking on one of your ads, or making the decision to buy one of your products. The earlier that users are involved in the design process, the better the chance your site will be a financial and creative success.

But if you do not have the resources to hire a researcher, don’t worry. You can still keep your users in mind early in the design process. The first step is to identify who your users are, and a great way to do this is to create a “user profile.” A user profile lists the various characteristics of your typical user, including average age, gender. You can take advantage of a number of free and open-source polling and survey applications, plug-ins and services. In fact, the poll on this blog, at right, is a good example of an open-source polling plug-in available for WordPress blogs.

What’s vital, of course, is that you communicate with your users, and provide them with a channel through which to communicate with you. Offering an email address and soliciting feedback is probably the easiest and quickest method. Two other inexpensive ways to track what your users are thinking and saying include creating a blog that solicits comments from your users (such as this one), and developing a community forum of your own where your users can communicate with each other, as well as with you. You can glean a lot of information from monitoring these channels.

Additionally, I recommend that you offer email updates to your users about your site’s content and your products. Trolling your competitors’ message boards, communities and blogs that deal with your sector or niche can also be helpful.

Your product managers, sales people and your customer support personnel (if you have them) are also terrific sources of info, as are the public reports of industry analysts, from sales and marketing studies and market analysts’ reports (like Charlene Li’s). Finally, the census bureau is a great repository of free demographic and regional data.

The persona touch
Designers may struggle to connect with abstract descriptions of their target users, so it helps to add details to a user profile to create a series of “personas”—fictitious but realistic representatives of your users, based on the information you’ve gleaned—with various identities, skill sets and user requirements.

Finally, I recommend creating different scenarios that involve the personas representing your user. A scenario is similar to a story board. Scenarios typically begin with a persona, then add more detail based on various user requirements, and show how a user would theoretically go through a series of tasks ending (hopefully) in the desired outcome. If carefully thought out, scenarios can act as a reality check that forces you to ask yourself, “Is this something my user would really do?” The combination of a persona and a scenario can bring your users to life and guide your design decisions. 

Testing, 1, 2, 3…
Using scenarios can be quite helpful for inspiring a design direction, but ideally you should validate your design decisions by performing usability testing. In this type of research, direct observations and feedback are gathered from actual users as they complete a series of assigned tasks while interacting with a prototype of the interface. Only then will you definitively know how well your proposed design meets the needs of your users.

— Michael Bartholomew, Yahoo! Design Research