In our practice in class, we tried to enter the world of the user in a very real way, by immersing ourselves in their experience. Although this is a powerful tool, in the real world it is not always practical or even possible. Fortunately there are other tools we can use that can still give us some insight into the experience of the user. In this homework you’re going to work with two such tools, personas and scenarios.
- Start by reflecting on what you’ve learned so far about users of the Volunteer Center web site, based on the research that we’ve done. We haven’t completed all our data collection, nor have we fully analyzed the data we have collected, but you all have several things you can draw on:
- Early in the course we did some web research on motivations of volunteers.
- Later we drew on the list that came from our web research to help code opportunity postings.
- You all have participated in an interview (mostly of volunteers, a couple of volunteer coordinators).
- You’ve all done a heuristic evaluation of the web site.
- Most of you have done user testing with the web site.
- Many of you have personal experience with volunteering.
- Draw on these sources of information to develop two personas for hypothetical users of the web site. Each persona should include the following:
- A name, along with some basic demographic information like age, gender, and occupation (which could be student or retiree).
- Some goals – what is this person trying to accomplish by visiting the web site?
- Some motivators/facilitators – these are factors that aid the user in moving toward their goal. This could include things like a need to gain experience to help with getting a job, being tech-savvy, being detail oriented, etc.
- Some constraints/barriers – these are factors that could interfere with the user moving toward their goal. This could include things like time constraints, lack of relevant knowledge, a tendency to become frustrated easily, etc.
There’s no standard format for personas, but you can still get an idea of what they should look like by looking at some examples; each of the following pages has one or more sample personas. Keep in mind that you are being asked to include somewhat different elements in your personas than what you will see in the examples.
https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/user-analysis-diving-design-part-1/
https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/ux-persona-examples
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html
- For each of these personas, now imagine that person visiting the Volunteer Center site to try to accomplish their goals. Think about how that might play out, and where the ‘pain points’ might be for that person. Then, write a scenario to describe what the user’s experience is like using the current version of page. Make sure your scenario includes the following:
- A description of the context or situation
- What your persona is trying to do
- At least one thing that happens that is frustrating, confusing, or interferes with them completing their task
Like with personas, there is no standard format for scenarios, however, the examples at the following sites can give you a general idea of what a scenario might look like. Keep in mind that these particular examples weren’t created for the purpose of highlighting difficulties with the current system, so your scenarios will look a little different.
http://infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/scenarios/
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/scenarios.html
- For each of your scenarios, make a sketch of an idea for how you could address your persona’s difficulty through a redesign of the site. You can make your sketch via pencil and paper, or use some sort of graphics program. It doesn’t need to be detailed or pretty, but it needs to be able to get the idea across. The following web page has some examples of sketches of web page layouts, to give you a sense of what your own sketch might look like. You may want to provide a sentence or two along with the sketch to make it clear how your idea would address the persona’s difficulty.
- Submit your homework via the Prototyping Homework submission page. Make sure to include your 2 personas, 2 scenarios, and 2 sketches.
- Your homework will receive separate scores for the personas, scenarios, and sketches.