The details of personas

It is the specificity and detail of personas that gives them their value.
- Alan Cooper

A real and useful persona should answer each of the following questions with a 'Yes'.
P-E-R-S-O-N-A: Primary research, Empathy, Realistic, Singular, Objectives, Number, Applicable.

• Primary research: Is the persona based on contextual interviews with real customers?
  Every key element of your persona should be traceable to observations and interviews in the real sites.
• Empathy: Does the persona evoke empathy by including a name, a photograph and a product-relevant narrative?
  A good persona has an engaging story to help designers relate to the persona.
• Realistic: Does the persona appear realistic to people who deal with customers day-to-day?
  Send your persona to front-line staff, customer support and the sales team, to check if they can recognise someone and believe in the persona.
• Singular: Is each persona unique, having little in common with other personas?
  Each of the personas in your set should comprise a unique cluster of behaviours, motivations and goals.
• Objectives: Does the persona include product-relevant right-level goals and include a quotation stating the key goal?
  Pitch yours goals at the right level by putting the most important goal in a brief quotation. Capture the user's goal and provides an appropriate design target at the same time.
• Number: Is the number of personas small enough for the design team to remember the name of each one, with one of the personas identified as primary?
  A Forrester survey of consultancies showed that firms created around four personas per project (and these were based on an average of 21 user interviews per project).
• Applicable: Can the development team use the persona as a practical tool to make design decisions?
  Your persona should focus on behaviours, motivations and goals rather than demographics.

角色模型需聚焦於產品使用行為、動機與目標，並結合照片與姓名，塑造成一個個獨特且引人入勝的情境劇本。將當前的目標轉化為簡短的「引言」，以兼顧描繪使用者與強調設計重點的目的。角色模型中所有的元素皆需來自真實情境的訪談，21個訪談內容約可建立4組角色模型，並擇一作為主要的模型。完成之後，需將模型交由與使用者互動的第一線人員，確認其內容的可信度。

(Source: How to create personas your design team will believe in by David Travis)

Rethinking focus groups

Focus groups used for the purpose of idea generation, rather than for market verification, can be particularly effective.

Focus group are quick and easy to design and use, which is also complemented by site visits.

To access participants' genuine thoughts and beliefs, we should be aware that in most instances people are unaware of the factors that influence their response. They are not able to introspect themselves.

Therefore, we can use indirect methods of tapping into cognition and behaviour. The key is to try and actually bypass the direct voice of the consumer, and pay attention to what people do in the actual field.

(Source: Is Consumer Research Losing Its Focus? by Philip Hodgson)

Tips for interviewers

Good interviewers build rapport.
Great interviewers realise that rapport involves more than meeting and greeting.

• Make a mental and emotional connection. It's a continual process of building a relationship based on trust and understanding.

Good interviewers listen.
Great interviewers realise that listening involves more than using our ears.

• Begin active listening by making a decision to become genuinely interested in what the interviewee thinks, feels and wants.
• Show interviewees that you are really attending to what they are saying through an open posture and eye contact.
• Listen for the meaning behind the words.
• Demonstrate you've listened to your interviewee by showing you are finding what they are saying interesting and encouraging the speaker to tell you more.

• 首先，給自己一個承諾：要真誠看待受訪者的想法、感受和期待。
• 透過肢體語言和眼神接觸，讓受訪者知道你在專注於他們所說內容。
• 傾聽話語背後的意義。
• 最後將所聽到與理解的內容，重述給受訪者聽，強調某些有趣可在深入探討的議題，以鼓勵受訪者分享更多。
  一方面暫緩受訪者被連續的問題轟炸，讓他們知道你懂；另一方面也可讓雙方釐清並確認搜集到的資訊無誤。

Good interviewers are sympathetic.
Great interviewers are empathic.

• Make people feel understood and valued.
• Use "empathic reflections" to give the speaker a verbal summary without passing judgment.
• "You feel...because..."
• "I'm picking up that you..."
• "So, from where you sit..."
• "It seems as if..."
• "I get the feeling..."
• "What I hear you saying is..."

Good interviewers are aware they might be biased.
Great interviewers use their self-awareness to uncover blocks to listening.

• Genuinely believe there's no right or wrong answer.
• Do not judge what's being said.
• Be aware of seeking confirmation, anxious or defensive reaction. Remember that it doesn't matter what you like, because you are not the user.
• Be non-judgemental towards both opinions and people.
• Ask yourself, "What am I thinking and feeling right now in reaction to this person?"

• 打從心底相信受訪者的答案沒有對與錯之分。
• 不要評論與批評受訪者所說的話。
• 覺察自己尋求認同、焦慮或反抗的反應。
• 對於人與觀念都要抱持著不妄加評論的態度。
• 時常問自己，「和此人互動時，我心裡想什麼、感受到什麼？」

Good interviewers note inconsistencies between what someone says and what they observe.
Great interviewers investigate these inconsistencies.

• Offer a gentle challenge when you see a discrepancy between what interviewees say and what they do. It may be a "blind spot".
• A good challenge is specific and non-accusatory. The purpose of a challenge is to stimulate discussion and help both of you understand more about the situation. 
• "You say you follow the process yet I noticed you seem to do things differently at two points."
• Sandwich: positive feedback + "I'm finding our meeting really interesting," + the challenge + "If we can discuss that, you'll help me even more".

• 點出受訪者言行不一的情況，深入調查。
• 一個好的試探應該是明確且委婉方式，目的在於刺激討論，幫助彼此更加了解。
• 亦可先做正向總結，再提出試探性的問題。

(Source: Site visit interviews: from good to great by Anna-Gret Higgins)

Interview tips: how to start and conduct interviews in a site visit

Visiting your customers at their place of work helps you really understand the needs, motivations and goals of your users.

Create a focus question
The focus question helps you concentrate on the observations that matter. Develop it by working with the project team and use a sticky note activity.

1. Give the project team 5 minutes to brainstorm all of the questions they would like to ask their users.
2. Tell them to write each question on a sticky note, one question per sticky note.
3. Place all the sticky notes on the wall and first arrange the questions into groups.
4. Vote for the most important group. The group of questions then becomes the articulation of the focus question.

1. 給專案組員五分鐘的時間，腦力激盪他們想問使用者的問題。
2. 請他們將問題寫在立貼上，每張紙一個問題。
3. 將立貼貼在牆上，並將所有問題歸類成組（約五分鐘）。
4. 選出最重要的一類。其中的問題即是需聚焦的問題。

Start the interview
"I am going to research [activity] so that I can [design a system]."

• Audio record the sessions
  Recordings can catch comments, phrases and some of the technical language, as well as Intonation. Video record is feasible in large, relatively anonymous spaces. Audio recording on the other hand is usually possible in most environments.
  
  • "I'll be taking notes during our interview, but if it's OK with you I'd also like to record the sessions as I can't take notes quickly enough. The recording is just for my purposes and anything you tell me will be kept confidential."
  • Pause the recording if sensitive data gets discussed. Change the participant's name when getting the transcriptions.
  • Reviewing the transcript in depth is the most important analysis step you'll make.
• Take photographs of the environment
  To recall key elements of the environment.It's easier to ask permission if you wait until the end of the session and give the partipant a gift before asking (such as some chocolates).
  Take three kinds of photograph:
  
  • Pictures that show the overall context.
  • Pictures that show the participant alongside other people and objects in the environment.
  • Close-up photographs of the participant interacting with specific objects in his or her environment.
  拍照的重點：
  
  • 整體環境，包括辦公室內部與建築外部空間。
  • 受訪者和其他人與物在環境中的相對位置。
  • 受訪者與特定物件互動的近照。
• Take great notes.
  Make sure that your note taking doesn't disrupt your relationship with the participant and miss observations.
  
  1. Take around 4 pages of A5 notes for each 30-minute observation.
  2. Reserve the first page of notes for any abbreviations and jargon that you hear: this quickly builds into a useful glossary.
  3. In addition to a few quotes that really strikes you, you should jot down ideas, key themes as they start to form, and also questions that you want to ask later in the discussion.
  4. 'AEIOU' method: Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects and Users.
  1. 30分鐘的訪談中，記錄約4頁A5的筆記
  2. 第一頁預留給聽到的縮寫和專業用語（之後可以拿來做成詞彙索引）。
  3. 記錄一些最有印象的話，受訪者的點子、談話中形成的主題、以及之後要問受訪者的問題。
  4. 如果不知道要記錄什麼，可以記錄從事的活動、環境、互動狀況、物件和使用者本身。
• Write up a short summary of their observation immediately.
  Schedule around 15 minutes after each participant to summarise what they have learnt. Use Contextual Interview form.
  

'AEIOU' method

Activities are goal directed sets of actions — things that people want to accomplish.
What primary activities do users need to perform to meet their goals? What do users mention first?
Which action words (verbs) do they use?

Environments include the entire arena where activities take place. Take photographs or make a sketch of the environment where the action happens.

Interactions are the exchanges between a person and someone or something else, and are the building blocks of activities.
What are the intermediate steps or tasks in the process?
What steps does the user enjoy most?
What are the user’s pet peeves?
Who reviews or authorises the work?

Objects are the artifacts that people interact with, as well as the building blocks of the environment.
What physical items does the participant interact with?
What software does the participant use?

Users are the people providing the behaviours, preferences and needs.
What are the participant’s goals, attitudes and motivations?
What are the participant’s capabilities with the product domain and with technology?
What education and training do participants have?

(Source: The 5 habits of highly effective field researchers by David Travis)

Tips for usability testing: the word list

Usability as:
Extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. (from ISO 9241-11)

The issues to be considered while designing a good questionnaire:

• Avoid positively-phrased statements (acquiescence bias).
• Reliability (信度): consistency and repeatability.
• Validity (效度): accuracy.

Other than questionnaires, we can adopt the alternative of the Microsoft Desirability Toolkit to control the tendency for the participants to rate their experience better than it actually was.

1. Prepare a simple paper checklist of adjectives. For a particular study, replace some of the words with others that may be more relevant. Here is the list developed by Userfocus.
2. Ask people to read through the words and select as many as they like that they think apply to the interface.
3. Ask them to circle just 5 adjectives.
4. The selected adjectives then became the basis of a post-test guided interview.

1. 根據研究目的，寫出一份內容適合的形容詞列表（參考英文版）。亦可加入品牌/產品形象用字。
2. 請使用者瀏覽並選擇他們認為符合該產品/介面的字詞。
3. 請使用者從他們選出來的字詞中，再圈選出五個。
4. 這五個字詞是測後訪談的討論重點。先前加入的品牌/產品形象用字，此時可一一和使用者討論他們選/不選、認同/反對的原因。
   "I see that one of the cards you selected was 'Sophisticated'. Tell me what was behind your choice of that word."

This approach is ideal as a qualitative approach to guide an interview. You can also derive metrics from these data via word cloud (try Wordle) and verbal protocol analysis (to count the percentage of positive and negative comments.)

Also apply randomisation or counterbalancing approach to generate the word list to prevent order effects.

(Source: Measuring satisfaction: Beyond the usability questionnaire by David Travis.)

Red route usability: how to define the cores

Make a decision to buy is difficult.

Red routes could and should achieve:

• Improve speed and effectiveness.
• Describe both frequent and critical activities.
  e.g. search: frequent; editing personal details: infrequent but critical.
• Reflect key business objectives.
• Reflect key customer objectives.
  Visitors to your site will have their own goals that your site needs to support.

Five characteristics of red routes:

• Be complete activities, not simple tasks.
• Imply a success look and an obvious measure of accomplishment.
• Must be "portable" to competitor web sites.
• Focus on goals not procedural steps.
• Be accurate and realistic.

How to define red routes:

• Carry out some research with customers.
• Have a look at a month's worth of search queries.
• Speak to the people who deal with customers.
• Listen into customer calls. Survey and classify the calls.
• Look at what your competitors are doing.

(Source: Red route usability: The key user journeys with your web site by David Travis)

Quantitative and objective

If you know a thing only qualitatively, you know it no more than vaguely.

Deep understanding, not broad coverage, is the strength of qualitative research.

Quantitative (量化) vs Qualitative (質化) 

• The way to distinguish between quantitative and qualitative data is to focus on the status of a single observation.
• Sample size does not determine whether data are quantitative or qualitative.
• Quantitative and qualitative data can be, and often are, collected in the same study.

Quantitative:

• Rating scales are not designed to capture opinions, per se, but rather are designed to capture estimations of magnitude. Data from Likert scales and continuous (e.g. 1-10) rating scales are quantitative.
• 可以比較大小

Qualitative:

• Qualitative data can be analyzed statistically, but cannot be compared in terms of magnitude.
• 無法比較大小

The comparison of quantitative and qualitative

Quantitative	Qualitative
any single observation is a number that represents an amount or a count	any single observation is a word, or a sentence, or a description that represents a category then the data
requires some precise measuring instrument	itself is the measuring instrument
usually during summative testing when measuring the usability of a system	usually during formative testing when identifying usability problems, such as cognitive walkthrough
attempting to prove something	attempting to understand something

Subjective (主觀) vs Objective (客觀)

• Subjective data result from an individual's personal opinion or judgement and not from some external measure. Objective data are 'external to the mind' and concern facts that actually exist.
• Both quantitative and qualitative data can be objective or subjective.

Examples of qualitative and quantitative data

	Quantitative	Qualitative
Objective	"The chip speed of my computer is 2 GHz"	"Yes, I own a computer"
Subjective	"On a scale of 1-10, my computer scores 7 in terms of its ease of use"	"I think computers are too expensive"

The discipline of usability is concerned with prediction, not opinions. Misunderstanding and misusing the above terms can reduce the value of a usability study, leading to wrong decisions. The consequences are a waste of company money and reduce people's confidence in what usability studies can deliver.

(Source: Usability Test Data by Philip Hodgson)

From a happy path to a cognitive walkthrough evaluation

The cognitive walkthrough is an ideal way to identify problems that users will have when they first use an interface... by exploration rather than by reading the manual.

Although a usability problem has been identified and is recorded, redesign suggestions are not made at this point.

Both cognitive walkthrough and heuristic approach are the methods of identifying usability problems. When I first came across these theories, I like the latter more for the reason that the results extracted from the former are subjective and sometimes abstract. Now I prefer cognitive walkthrough as its principle is based on asking questions to distil usability problems from users' experiences, while heuristic evaluation seems like guidelines for the designers and analysts.

The cognitive walkthrough involves the happy path and 4 questions to be asked before, during and after each step in the happy path.

the happy path

• A complete, written list of the actions/steps needed to complete the task with the interface — the ‘happy path’.
• If the happy path was too complicated, you've found a serious usability problem already. It would not make users happy at all.

4 questions

• Will the customer realistically be trying to do this action?
  If the participants were trying to do something deliberately and inconsistent with their inital intention, the design may not be based on users' background knowledge and expect some unnatural actions from user.
• Is the control for the action visible?
• Is there a strong link between the control and the action?
  This question highlights problems with ambiguous or technical terms, or with other controls that looks like a better choice.
• Is feedback appropriate and does the action prompt users to make progress towards the next step in the task?
  The feedback might be missing, or easy to miss, or too brief, poorly worded, inappropriate or ambiguous.

or Streamlined cognitive walkthrough, a cut-down version not documenting problem-free steps and combining the four original questions into two:

• Will people know what to do at each step?
• If people do the right thing, will they know that they did the right thing, and are making progress towards their goal?

(Source:  The 4 questions to ask in a cognitive walkthrough by David Travis, Designing Interactive Systems by David Benyon)