Hello there, my Balsamiq friends, it's Piccia
Neri here, I am a UX and design expert and global speaker, and today I'm here to talk to you
about UX research and specifically User Personas. Now, you might remember that in
the previous video we talked about how we did the competitive analysis for the UX
rebuild of the website of the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. So here it is, it's a very beautiful
museum and it's reopening again in Summer 2022 after a long time being, well, shut because of
the pandemic, but also they've been reorganizing the hangings and doing a lot of restoration,
so if you find yourself in Italy, by all means, go to the beautiful city of Perugia and visit the
Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. You, of course, will be able by then to perfectly organize your
visit thanks to the fabulous new site that will be live by then.
First of all, I want to explain
a little bit about what it is that we're doing, what is this process. It's the UX process:
it starts with research, this is the phase that we are in, this could go on for as long
as possible because the more research you do, the easier the following phase (which is design)
is going to be, because when you know exactly who you are designing for and what you are designing
for them, because you know what they need, then it's going to be much, much quicker to
wireframe and then, following that, the surface design. Then design is followed by validation,
which is another way of saying testing, because even though your really testing starts already
when you do research and you should never not test, you should always be testing, really
it's not a linear process and it's not like: okay, we validated, now we can go home. No!
The UX process is something that never actually stops. So validation may go back to research,
and that might make you go back to design, and then back from research to validation.
But
this is where we are now in still, we are in the research process and we've now moved
to working out who the user personas are. I've pulled out a good article for
you: “User personas are archetypical users whose goals and characteristics represent the
needs of a larger group of users.” Usually, a persona is presented in a one or two-page
document like this one. Now, there are a million different ways of doing user personas. There isn't
one perfect way, and you're always going to adapt it to your needs and to the needs of your project,
and also to what the people you're working with are used to.
What you do when you set on to this
exercise, there's a few things to bear in mind, at least the way I do it. I prefer to do it actually
by finding a name and giving people a face, because if you're specific it becomes much
easier to think about creating experiences that will specifically serve them. However, one
important thing that you need to bear in mind is that a user persona is often based on a user that
exists because you are thinking about them, is someone that you know, this is kind of inevitable
— but at the same time, it should also be ideal because it's a combination of the people that
are already using your products or your service, or your gallery in this case, and the people
that you would really, dearly want to attract. So the demographics are important, but they're not
really as important as the psychographics.
There was a really fun image doing the rounds lately
of Prince Charles of Wales and Ozzy Osbourne from Black Sabbath. Their demographics are basically
the same but they are, I think you'll admit, completely different people. This image was doing
the rounds on LinkedIn. Basically, Prince Charles, this is typical user persona: male, born in
’48, raised in the UK, married twice, lives in a castle, wealthy and famous. Guess what, Ozzy
Osbourne has exactly the same demographics, so be careful with demographics. Psychographics are
what matters.
Now, a museum such as this one has a huge variety of users, and they had never before
stopped to think about what a user persona was and what the individual needs. What we looked at was
a number of typical museum-goers and we identified six, which is just about right. I think that
any fewer than this would have been probably not representative, any more would have overwhelmed
us, because in a case of a museum like this, there's a layer of complication which is added
by the fact that you have a digital experience that goes hand-in-hand with the actual
real-world experience, which is hugely important and in fact, with this museum,
it's a point that they're making, that they want to offer a digital experience
that accompanies the real-world one. So the first one is Annika Strauss, she's a
pensioner, she's 56 and she comes from Germany, so Annika is a very typical representative of
any tourist that could come from anywhere in Europe. Annika is interested in the arts
but not obsessed, she loves the life, the good life, and she wants to do something
interesting with her grandchildren, that's who she is traveling with.
She knows who Perugino
is (Perugino is the most famous artist that's in the museum.) What we look at then, once we have
the demographics and the psychographics, we start thinking what are their goals, what do they want
from us, and what are the barriers that they have to achieving their goals. So she wants to make
sure that the kids have fun, she wants to get to the museum easily, she wants to find an easy train
in. She also wants to eat well without struggling to find a vegetarian restaurant. She wants to fill
the day in a fun and relaxing way, but there are a few barriers, because the children might get
bored and have a tantrum, she doesn't know yet what is going to be in the museum.
Then
getting to Perugia by train is a nightmare. So that's where you start thinking about the
solutions, and I'm sure that you can already see how helpful this is when you actually sit down and
think about the website itself. So she will need opening times, maps, train times, travel options,
and ticket prices directly on the homepage. Don't make her hunt for it. Then she will want a page
dedicated to education. Then she wants articles on what to do and where to eat in Perugia.
Also, she will want educational and play times in English because there are activities organized
for children there. We're going to make it easy for her to find the information that she needs
directly on the site.
Then the second persona that we identified is a really important one, it's
the university researcher with a specialization in Medieval art history and freelance curator
who uses this site for work. It's one of the site's missions, you don't need a special login
or anything like that: anybody can see what our friend Mirko can see, and again, because
working out how to present each of the works of art with all their details
was something that we spent a long, long time on, it was so good to know that we
were thinking about Mirko as well, as Annika, in the way we would present it.
Then the other
persona was Arnaldo Filippini who actually exists, and he's a graphic designer and he doesn't live
nearby, he lives in in the far north of Italy, and he's passionate about the visual arts.
He really, really knows his onions about art and he's extremely up to date with user
experience of course, because of his job, both online and offline. So he has a lot of needs
and we are very careful because we want to serve Arnaldo correctly. Then the other very, very,
very, very important persona is Matilde. Matilde is a primary school teacher. The museum is often
full of school children so it's very important that the site helps the visit.
It's extremely
important, and even in this first version of the site we are making sure that she gets all the
information that she needs in order to be able to prepare the visit in confidence and in in peace,
knowing that she knows everything beforehand and she's able to organize. Then another super
important persona, they all are! Azzurra is 18 and she's a student, and she lives in the area,
and she's an instagrammer and a tik toker, and she thinks the museums are boring. This one isn't:
the Instagram account is really geared towards showing young people the interesting side —
but she's a difficult, she's a tough customer, we need to work out how to make her want to come
and how we serve her, because she hasn't really come before. She would come as a child with
Matilde, but she probably hasn't been since, so we need to think about her.
Then, finally,
the wealthy pensioner, Maria Lucrezia. She is married, she's very interested in culture,
and basically, she would like to be the director. I tell you why that's super important: because
this is where you start thinking about membership, the various initiatives that you can set up
in order to make sure that Maria Lucrezia feels like she's a part of it, because she
is!, she's been coming to the museum since she was a child and she's supported it, she's
organized stuff for it, she's fundraised, she deserves our full attention. So the membership
site to this museum is going to be so interesting, we're thinking about having a sponsors page,
a fundraising page, and a membership program based on exclusive content that is going
to be in the next phase of the project and I can't wait for that, because I think it will
be amazing. By the way, i just want to show you quickly the website that I use for these photos:
these people do not exist because I'm not allowed to use their face. You can use this website,
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/, and whenever you refresh it, it's a different photo.
You can
right-click and open, save image, copy image, copy image link. You can do lots of things with
it. I hope that this helped in understanding what user personas are and what they are for.
Again, this is based on data that is already available to the museum, these are all based on
their own knowledge and information of actual real users that we've condensed in ideal versions
of them. It doesn't mean that we won't test with real people, of course! We absolutely will. Thank
you so much, I hope this was helpful, bye bye..
