Writing persona narratives - about existing scenario vs envisioned end scenario

Question

Question in short

When writing personas, do I: 1. Describe them in their current situation using whatever tool they may be using, or with no tool 2. Describe them using the tool that I am developing, ie a future tool, not one they are actually using yet

My basic understanding of persona

Correct me if I am wrong. Personas are a tool to be used before the design process, though I guess they can be revised at any point later in the process. When having the personas in place one can start designing for them, or at least by referencing to them in some way.

My example case

While my question is a general one, I will provide my example so that it is hopefully easier for you to understand my question. I want to design a product, an interface, for managing the heating system in a house. It will be a panel hanging on the wall, with various features like 1) raising the temperature for a few hours and then return to default, 2) set automatic down adjustment of temperature during the night, 3) display energy usage and expenses for a chosen period of time.

I have written my personas as narratives based on what I envision. That is:

1. Anne comes home from work bicycling and feels very cold. She's had a long day, and now she wants to lie on the sofa for an hour until the rest of the family comes home. But the livingroom is cold, so on her way to the sofa she presses the '1hr boost' button, before she lies down.
2. Paul thinks his wife uses the boost button too often, and he thinks his daughters forget to turn off the heating before opening the windows. Now and then, when he is confronted with what he considers money wasting behavior, he goes to the panel and checks the energy usage. He browses back and forward through the days and gets an overview. He sees that in the weekend they used extraordinarily much energy, while the teenagers were away.

Now, I like these personas. They make sense for me, they are believable and I can imagine these scenarios very well. They help me understand the user, and imagine the product I want to build. BUT, they are written while I already have an imagined end product, and the persona narratives describe how the users interact with my imagined product.

Writing personas based on their lives without my end product is not very helpful

So let's say that I actually want to do the personas about their lives without the panel. The problem is, that there will not be any options for 'boost' nor for reading energy consumption. In fact, most people no matter their technical skills, will adjust radiators the exact same way. I know some countries have these central panels for electric radiators, but in my country everybody has hot water radiators which can only be regulated by a temperature adjusting valve on each radiator.

Summary of question

Is it ok, or is it unadvisable, to use personas the way I do, instead of using them to describe the personas before introducing the new product.

Are there any best practices regarding such a dilemma, any helpful experiences, or any literature (blogs, papers, tutorials) on this?

Answer 1

The question you are asking doesn't pertain to personas, it pertains to user flows.

What the user currently does with existing tools is one set of user flows. What the user would do if using your product as intended is another set of user flows.

The persona should be the same for both.

Otherwise, as @tonytrucco mentions, you are not inventing a product that fits the persona, you are inventing a persona that prefers your user flow to the existing user flow.

Answer 2

Use both, but in order

• Personas are intended to provide a model for user behavior. This may include needs, emotions, perceptions, incentives, and goals.

• Personas are intended to help designers understand the problem domain before they start designing a solution. Understanding the problem domain before trying to design a solution is considered a basic tenant of design practice.

• Personas evolve together with the design. So a persona may be used to understand user needs, but as the designer creates and explores solutions, she may develop the persona to explore how users would interact with one or more solutions.

• If you create a persona with a particular solution in mind, you may be short-circuiting the design process, because this closes your thinking to other possible solutions.

  • The danger here is: instead of creative thinking, all you are doing is rationalizing the design you have in mind. This is not always the case, but it's a common hazard for designers who are in a hurry and rush the problem domain analysis (for which personas is a tool).
  • To illustrate using an old saying: if you start out with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. This is what can happen when the design process/persona modeling starts with a solution in mind:

  

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In summary, you can and certainly should use a persona with a particular solution....but try to do this only when you're satisfied that you have properly modeled the user's needs and behaviors irrespective of the solution. Otherwise, you are starting with the proverbial hammer....

Answer 3

It seems more like a narrative for a user-test, rather than the narrative for a persona, which are more a general "bio" regarding the user.

To me a persona consists of:

• Name, Picture & Demography
• Bio
• Goals
• Frustrations

If you decide to go with proto-personas, don't forget to actually test them with your real audience by qualitative and quantitive data. I'd suggest you simply go in the field and interview some people, preferably extremes, people who turn it up the maximum and people who are very ecological minded, or better yet, people how don't use it all. (although this is a very narrow view at it, perhaps you make it a little broader so that you perhaps see something more beyond the scope).

prevent feature for the sake of feature

I'd suggest watching some of Alan Cooper's interviews or read his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ljzXB40hw http://www.amazon.com/The-Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/0672326140

Answer 4

So personas are supposed to exist and act as a sort of guidepost for you as you design your product or solution. Typically they're based on real data/feedback but can also be generalized to fit a larger audience. Personas should never co-exist with the final product. That's where you're supposed to perform user testing and verify the validity of your solution.

A common pitfall of many start-ups is that they invent a product and then try to invent their audience. I know this is a school project, but you have taken a similar approach by envisioning your end-goal and then creating Personas that are tailor-made to utilize it. It's a great way to make your product seem valuable, but it's not an effective approach to problem solving.

If your project is about heat pumps then you should already have some information that would be useful for creating fresh Personas. Come up with a couple typical users of the heat pumps and describe their lives. Even if they interact with the pumps in the same way, they likely have different needs. You already started this work when you were envisioning your goal (you clearly had problems you were attempting to solve). Now go back and create the proper Personas; these will help you focus your solution and help to keep you honest about the viability of your solution.