Whether it’s on Facebook, at Meetups, or in the office, a common question asked in UX introductory discussions is what to do with personas and where to go from there. On this particular occasion today, I chimed in.
I was first trying to provide thoughts on how to define current state journeys from a research interview to see what their goals, problems, motivations, and behaviours were. However, someone asked me whether I’d use a different process from getting a persona written before going off into design.
The following was my in-haste attempt to reply and explain how I see there being so much more opportunity to learn and define the problem we want to solve before we start drawing boxes on paper or slinging code.
Define and agree on the problem hypothesis you want to test. Describe what the business or customer problem you think is worth solving, such as what the product or service gap in the market is and why this would be valuable to pursue.
Go observe real people doing real things! Enquire about their thoughts, feelings, and actions along the way, but remember too that what people say and what they actually do can be quite different. Keep finding people until you start to feel like you’ve seen it all; you can keep learning more later (and should).
Optionally draft personas for each of type of unique goal seen that people are trying to achieve.
Map out the current customer journey. You don't need anything fancier than just lots and lots of Post-it notes, markers, and wall (or floor) space. An Excel doc will do in a pinch if it’s easier to share.
Where there are key pain points, there are business opportunities—note them. Which might benefit the customer and business both if solved? The Lean Canvas business cases has blocks for Top 3 pains and opportunities seen if you want to use that structure.
Have a good look at the market—what are your competitors doing locally to globally? Check for sharks! A blue ocean might present problems worth diving into, but a blood red ocean may have too many others already fighting for the same food.
Prioritise what you want to go after. Not all ideas are worth trying at once, nor should you. Pick a place to start prototyping.
Run an ideation workshop. If personas help the team step into someone else’s shoes, then hand them out to take on those perspectives. Give creative challenges such as Crazy Eights to think up many possible pathways to solve the prioritised problem. How might we solve this if money or time weren’t an issue? What might the simplest change be?
Narrow down which ideas to pursue with dot voting if needed. Collectively get down to a small, feasible list of ideas to build on that would provide immediate value to the customer if completed.
Map out what the target state customer journey would look like if they had this solution in hand. Once again, you really don’t need much mor than some sticky notes and pens. How do you think each of the personas would react to these changes? This is a great opportunity to test some more! The more research done now, the less rework later.
Now you might start getting into actual user flow and interface design. Use whatever design tool you prefer (e.g. Balsamiq, Sketch, InVision, etc), but work from low to high fidelity to keep rework costs low.
Don’t forget to keep testing! Find potential customers and iteratively test the usability, desirability, and viability of your concepts before slinging more code.
Talk is cheap, development is not.
Observe, question, learn.
I've always quite liked this UX approach phase diagram by peepaldesign for its simultaneous simplicity and level of detail