Build Better Products. Laura Klein

who you think is actually buying your product. If you have some recent research, feel free to refer to it for this process, but don’t worry about getting these perfect immediately. They’re only provisional. You’ll validate whether you’re right later on. This is about getting everybody on the team to share a single vision of the user.

       RUN THE EXERCISE: PROVISIONAL PERSONAS

       TIME TO RUN

       1 hour

       MATERIALS NEEDED

       Sticky notes, Sharpies, paper

       PEOPLE INVOLVED

       Product managers, designers, researchers, engineers

       EXERCISE GOAL

       Create a theoretical vision of your product’s ideal user.

      If you have an existing product rather than a new one, you may already have different types of people using your product for many different reasons. This does naturally happen with products that have been around for a while.

       PRO TIP

       One of the reasons it’s fine to hyperfocus on a specific group of people when developing a new product or feature is that you’re not going to stay with that group of people for the entire life of your product. You’re not limiting your market forever just because you’re limiting it for the first few iterations. Once you’ve made something really great for one group of people, you’ll eventually start to branch out into adjacent markets and add features that are great for them as well (hopefully without destroying your old market). This is why existing products almost always have more than one persona.

      For this particular exercise, focus on one user type. If you’re planning on making a change to your product—and you wouldn’t be reading this book if your product were perfect—then you need to get used to focusing on one specific type of user. Eventually, you’ll want to do this exercise multiple times until you’ve got a good understanding of all your personas, but focus on one for now.

      Each team member should get a pack of sticky notes and a regular sheet of paper. First, they’ll take their piece of paper, turn it sideways, and divide it into four quadrants (see Figure 2.3). The team should do this part of the exercise silently and independently. You’ll compare your work later, but it’s important that everybody participates in this first part alone so that you can understand how you each think about your key user without influence.

FIGURE 2.3 Divide your paper into four quadrants.

       Give the Prompts

      You’re going to give four different prompts to your team. For each prompt, they’re going to take two minutes and write down as many things as they can—one item per sticky note. Make them write for the full two minutes each time without talking. You’re not going to use all of the answers they write down, but having more options will force people to think more deeply about what makes these people users.

       Facts

      The first prompt to give your team is to write down as many facts about the ideal user as possible. It could be things like what college she went to or how much money she makes.

      Here’s the key: only write down the things that make her easy to identify as a user of your product. For example, you don’t need to write down that she owns a dog unless your product is made for dog owners or dog ownership somehow affects whether or not she’ll be a user. Don’t write things like “2.4 children and a golden retriever” unless that’s key to their usage of your product.

      At the end of two minutes, everybody should take the most pertinent four facts and put them in the upper-left corner box (see Figure 2.4). The most pertinent facts might be things like her job and her salary, or it might be the fact that she has two kids and lives in San Francisco. And yes, you can mention that your persona is a mom. You just can’t stop there. It can be a factor, but not the only factor.

FIGURE 2.4 Add facts.

       Problems

      Next, have your team write down the problems that this user has. Again, you’re going to concentrate on the problems that make her into a user. If you have a product that allows people to summon cars from their phones, you might want to identify people who don’t have cars of their own but still occasionally need to drive places or people who like to go out drinking on the weekends but don’t have a way to get home from bars.

      At the end of two minutes, have each person pick the top four problems and put them in the upper right-hand corner of the paper.

       Behaviors

      The next prompt is to have your team identify the behaviors that make somebody a user. These are not necessarily behaviors that current users have. These are the behaviors that somebody might exhibit before starting to use your product.

      For example, if you’re building a SaaS product for salespeople to improve their efficiency, one of their behaviors might be that they tend to make notes on a piece of paper while in meetings with potential new leads and then input those notes into their computer at night in the hotel room. This is a behavior that might influence a design decision about a new service you want to provide to salespeople.

      Again, when the team is done writing, have each person pick the four behaviors they think are the most relevant and put them in the bottom-left corner of the paper.

       Needs and Goals

      For the last quadrant, you’re going to have the team identify as many relevant needs and goals of the user as they can in two minutes. What is the person trying to accomplish or become?

      Maybe the person using the car service wants to be able to get home safely from a bar on Saturday night without having to call half a dozen cab companies. The salesperson might want to save two hours of data entry after a full day of meetings. These are the goals and needs that you think will drive adoption of your product.

      When you’re all done, everybody on the team should have filled in all the quadrants (see Figure 2.5).

      

FIGURE 2.5 A full provisional persona.

       Pick a Provisional Persona

      Now, it’s very possible that your team has generated more than one view of the user during this exercise, even if you were all trying to describe the same person.

      If there are only minor differences, you can have a short discussion