… that the “Key To Great Web Software Is A Consistent, Intuitive User Experience“

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)  providers, according to last week’s Forbes article, will need to focus on the user’s experience across all products.
The author, Alexander Pasik, Ph.D., CIO for IEEE, points to Google’s cloud computer services as “providing best-in-class user experiences that are consistent across their offerings.” As Google has purchased new products, they have converted each into the Google look and feel, helping users to feel that they are using a Google product and giving them the ability to use their previous experiences across Google’s products.

According to Pasik the benefits a consistent, intuitive user experience brings are that:

• User’s can apply their expertise to all of the other programs
• There is an intuitive feel across each separate component.
• The need for training on multiple applications is eliminated
• Single login eliminates the inconvenience of having to remember multiple user names and passwords

Pasik also thinks about the the long-term benefit of making a great user experience in this article and says that:

“Satisfied end users tend to please those who are paying the bills, which, in turn, is likely to prompt other potential clients to prefer that solution. If, however, employees are dissatisfied, there’s going to be little incentive for the client to continue with – let alone recommend — a troublesome vendor.”

Celebrities are immediately recognizable and in some cases, the majority of the people using the persona may have a good idea of “who” that person is. So it would make sense to consider using them for personas, however in most cases this is a poor choice.
I’ll use Matt LeBlanc as an example. Matt played Joey Tribbiani on the NBC television sitcom “Friends” (and other shows). The members of your team who are knowledgeable about Matt may or may not agree with his politics or religious beliefs.  They may feel that his most recent TV show is a bad idea.
Matt and his character Joey are often difficult to separate because he played the character for so long. The team may confuse Matt with the TV character and be unsure if the user are all as dim-witted as his character on TV (which may be ok). If Matt gets himself in the news for poor choices in real-life, that could potentially distract from the project.
All of these issues can change the teams’ perception of the persona (for better or worse). Is that ok?

The purpose of a persona is to provide a shared understanding of whom the team is designing for. If team members get different information – for example one seeing an article on the internet about Matt’s recent escapade – that changes their understanding of the persona and may change the way they design the product. If different people on the team are designing for different users (even relatively small differences), it can become a large problem.
I avoid using images of recognizable people in personas. That includes the actual product users that the team knows, because my priority is to leave any external baggage out of the persona. Personas need to be fresh and focused.
Finding appropriate images for Personas is often a daunting process. They must be believable. Not too attractive as to distract from their purpose. They need to look like a “real” person, someone who looks like they would be natural in the situation. Professional photographers take beautiful photos – too beautiful. Getting stock art reduced the feeling that the persona is real.

Finding Great Persona Images

I recommend using a site like Flickr that has photos of people who are taken by amateur photographers. On Flickr I use the Advanced Search feature. When you go to Flickr click on the Search feature, a new Search section will be displayed. Select the Advanced Search link.

On the Advanced Search page, towards the bottom is the Creative Commons option. When the photographer selects a Creative Commons-license that means they are giving permission for other people to use their images.

I also usually select the “commercial” feature despite the fact that personas are only used internally. What resources do you use?

Axure, an interactive prototyping tool, allows you to publish prototypes online at AxShare. I tried it out today and overall, it is a nice tool and provides a quick, simple way to share clickable prototypes with others.  AxShare isn’t a new tool – Molly Malsam had mentioned it in as a “Collaboration Tools I Wouldn’t Want to Live Without” last year – but I found out about it today in an email from Axure.

How does it work?

I uploaded my Axure file (.rp) to their system and it gave me an option to include a password (I did). Once that was uploaded, I shared the provided link to the prototype.
I found out the hard way that the password is case sensitive, so I will need to remember to share that information with my team.
For those of you with larger prototypes, AxShare still displays the left navigation bar. This is extremely helpful for quick page changes (a current project of mine has over 60 screens).  Molly had mentioned wanting to see commenting capabilities and they have added a Discuss area (also in the left bar).

Benefits?

There are benefits for me, and my teammates and clients will reap substantial benefits. I will have the ability to conduct usability tests on any machine that has an internet connection. I will also be able to receive comments and discuss the prototypes in context with the on-page features in the left bar.
My teammates and clients no longer need to download large files, or have to decipher my directions on how to open and view the prototype. However, there is a possibility that some will have limited access to the AxShare site due to security settings.
As I said, AxShare is a great new option to add to my UX toolbox and I look forward to using it.
 

Tomer Sharon’s book, “It’s Our Research: Getting stakeholder buy-in for user experience research projects” just came out and though I’m still reading it, I am already ready to recommend it (disclaimer: I contributed a Case Study to it).
Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to attend and speak at the IA Summit and not surprisingly I spoke with many people about getting stakeholders to understand what it is User Experience folks do and why our work is important. Admittedly, User Experience work is very hot right now, and yet there are plenty of people who still have questions about what it is and how it could help their organization.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I was speaking at the IA Summit on the topic of negotiation and how important it is in order to not only be able to plan projects effectively, but also to convince stakeholders of my recommendations. This led to some interesting side conversations about salary negotiations and the balance of life and work. The focus returned to discussions of how good negotiation skills can help us to collaborate and compromise with stakeholders to find a solution that is amenable to everyone (especially the users).
The case study I contributed to Sharon’s book focused on the importance of communicating clearly by using a vocabulary that is familiar and consistent to the group I’m working with. This is another skill that can greatly improve negotiations and the chances that stakeholders will not only understand what I am saying, but also agree that my recommendations should be implemented.  Achieving great user experiences can be done without these skills, but certainly the presence of good negotiation skills and clear communication is a huge help.

Great products are not usually created by just one person. They are collaborative projects that involve many people with different personal and professional experiences. Bringing all of these individuals together to create something for someone they may never have met is challenging at best.
Teams that are good at working together and helping each other improve their social skills, have a higher potential to create a great experience.

To make great experiences, the entire team needs to utilize their social skills including:

• being respectful;
• communicating clearly (verbal, body language, etc.);
• listening actively;
• understanding cultural differences;
• negotiating effectively; and
• being a good leader.

This isn’t always easy, and many of us have deficiencies in at least one of these skills.
For the User Experience professional such as myself, negotiation is the most important of these skills. From the earliest planning stages, the UX professional needs to be able to represent the users’ needs. There may be a wide gap between the information I have already available to me, and the information I need to effectively inform design.  The way I present the case for doing UX research and my ability to convince the team or client of the need for that work will influence the type of work that is planned and the quality of information I end up with.
Once the UX study is completed, I still need to persuade my client and the team that my recommendations will meet the user’s needs and will be on balance with the client’s needs. Frequently this involves negotiating to determine what features and content are included and what is left for later.
The more effective I am at negotiating, the better I can represent the needs of the users. When the users are well represented, the result is a great experience!
What do you think? Tell me in person – I am speaking on the topic of “Empower Yourself. Negotiate for the User” at the IA Summit next week.

Personas are incredibly helpful at informing project teams because they are powerful mnemonics for large amounts of data. They combine our ability to perceive and recognize other human faces and our ability to remember stories in a light, accessible document. Personas are based on deep research of the users through interviews, observations, and other reliable sources of data.
The reality is that we don’t always have the luxury of being able to conduct the research to create a persona. What can we do?

When the time and effort required to create Personas is not an option, I advocate creating “Profiles.”  Profiles include basic information about the target user and are based on both assumptions and some research. More importantly, they can be created quickly, even through brainstorming sessions. Profiles can be considered a pre-persona stage of the research process. I make sure they are clearly visibly different from any existing Personas and work with the team to understand the difference.
During a discussion on Twitter last week @saraford asked my opinion on a blog entry on ZURBlog titled “Using TV to Create Customer Profiles” and I was taken aback at first. I love the TV show GLEE  and here were the characters being proposed as Profiles (thankfully not as Personas). The blog stated that the TV based Profiles purpose was to “tell the story of users who have real problems, goals, and desires, so their traits and behaviors ultimately affect the designs and interactions of the product.”  That sounded reasonable enough.
So I asked myself “how much different from the Profiles I create are these?” Mine are based on assumptions and brainstorming sessions with stakeholders that may not have much more than educated guesses to go on. These TV based Profiles are based on not-so-stereotypical teenagers on a TV show. Both leave a lot of questions unanswered and both are based on unconfirmed information.
Well then, why not use TV characters?
The TV based Profiles have additional “baggage” that is brought with them. Not only is there the on-screen life of the character to consider, but there can be added complications with their off-screen real-life antics. Additionally, while we cannot know the future for anyone, TV characters have an odd way of being very unpredictable and their story line may be a big distraction to the team.
I can see using TV based Profiles as a jumping off point. A way to at least start the conversation about the users. It sounds like a fun activity. What do you think?
If I was on a project with these TV based Profiles, I would move to anonymous images and descriptions as quickly as possible. That way any unintended consequences could be avoided. Once the project was moving forward and as time allowed for more research those Profiles could be turned into Personas that would be truly helpful to the team.