Getting Started: Design Thinking, Persona, and Usability

Want your users to fall in love with your designs? Fall in love with your users. — Dana Chisnell

All software creates experiences for its users and every developer (most likely) has good intentions, wanting to provide the best experience possible. Now that software is just about everywhere, that means it has very real affects on their lives (both positive and negative) — so part of the point of this course is to understand why making software is about so much more than just writing code.

Your ultimate goal should be to create software that provides value to users.

For these activities, brainstorming means focusing on the quantity of ideas over their quality by practicing “Yes, and” to build on what another person shares, rather than objecting to or tearing ideas down the idea. Other suggestions to help you ideate include:

• questioning or reversing your assumptions
• wishing for or exaggerating an idea
• asking "why?" repeatedly to get to the heart of the idea
• focus on the project's central issue or concern
• or even using this AI powered brainstorming tool :)

Part 1: Experiencing Software as a User

Try to think as broadly as possible about the software you interact with regularly: such as the OS, desktop software, web sites, mobile apps, search engines, cars, appliances, security systems, sensors, smart homes, etc. Likely you use bad software because you have to and use good software because you want to. Likely you also been excited about new software or a new update only to be disappointed and, perhaps, stopped using it all together. Take this time to think about what differentiates those experiences and how you can learn to develop software that provides value and users enjoy using it.

Users have a range of feelings about the software they use that exist in many dimensions. For this exercise, consider the following:

• from required to useful to valuable
• from frustrating to effective to delightful (that's a technical term :)
• from complicated to functional to elegant (easy to use)
• from suspicious to credible to trustworthy
  

As a team, discuss your software usage experiences following the steps below:

• Individually
  • Come up with as many examples of software as you can for each of the 12 italicized words above.
    • There will likely be many for some categories and few (or none) for others, so feel free to reuse software in different categories as needed (i.e., required and frustrating).
    • Look at as many options as you can (phone, desktop, open tabs, or anything else to help jog your memory).
    • Think about specific activities you have done recently since they likely involved interacting with software.
  • Try to identify a "hidden gem" — software that you really enjoy using but that you think others in your group will not know about.
    • Think of a story about what makes using the software so good, perhaps even how it makes a difference in your life
• As a group
  • Compare your lists looking for some for which everyone agrees and some for which there is significant disagreement
    • Where there is agreement, discuss what about the software makes it bad, average, or good to see if you can figure out how to describe that distinction
    • Where there is disagreement, share your experiences to help others understand your feelings and then, again, see if you can come up with something to share about what made the software experience so different
  • Compare your hidden gems (perhaps someone else thought your choice was terrible :)
    • If multiple people picked the same hidden gem, compare what makes it valuable to each of you
    • If not, then share your stories and try to identify what factors make the software valuable

You may also want to take some time to consider how you get your software: open source, free (but at some external cost), subscription based, paid for, included with the purchase of something tangible, etc.; as well as with how much control the End User License Agreement (EULA) (you definitely read :) leaves you. Any whether or not that impacts your feelings about its value.

Part 2: Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a methodology to innovation that emphasizes understanding of the problem you are trying to solve, empathetic understanding of the people you are trying to help, and an iterative process. You can better understand the human behind your next product, method, service, or process idea using design thinking exercises during any phase of your project.

The five steps of the Design Thinking Process:

1. Empathize – Understand the perspective of the target audience/customer/consumer to identify and address the problem at hand.
2. Define – Define the problem statement clearly.
3. Ideate –  Brainstorm ways to address identified unmet needs.
4. Prototype – Identity which of the possible solutions can best solve the identified problem(s).
5. Test – Test the product with your target audience to get feedback.

Design Thinking is both a mindset and a process to generate bold and innovative ideas that are designed with the end-user in mind.

Use these exercises to help you better understand the problems your app is trying to solve and think of different ways to solve those problems:

• Five Whys: uncover why someone would want to use your app
• Customer Journey Maps: consider the user’s total experience with your app
• Assumptions and Questions: unmask assumptions and uncertainties you are making about your app

Part 3: Personas

Personas are hypothetical archetypes of actual users, used throughout the design process to help you understand the humans your product is for so you can build features your users will value. Although they are imaginary, they should be defined with significant rigor and precision. Actually, they are not so much 'make up' as discovered as a byproduct of the investigation process (although their names and personal details are definitely made up).

Using personas helps you develop empathy and prevents you from designing for yourself.

As a team, discuss who might use your app and what problems it will solve:

• Individually, come up with 3-4 different user descriptions:
  • WHO is our user?
  • WHAT is the problem they’re experiencing?
  • HOW might we solve the problem?
• As a group
  • Organize all the different WHOs into common groups to narrow the results
  • Create three Empathy Maps of possible users of your app
  • Take your time to let everyone feels that someone has taken form in their mind before writing down the details 
  • Begin to fill out personal details for these three potential Personas using a template like this one that includes such details as values, interests, education, lifestyle, needs, attitudes, desires, limitations, goals, and any extra stories that make them more real and relevant

Part 4: Brainstorming

In turns, for each Persona's needs:

• ask questions from the Persona's perspective to get the presenter to think more deeply about the idea, especially generating possible:
  • persona qualities
  • ideal positive impact
  • ethical and equity issues
  • differentiating features
  • social or collaborative features
• generate a diverse range of potential solutions to the problems or pain points
• brainstorm User Stories that solve a specific need (brief statements that express what users need) in the form:
  

  As a (role), I want (function) so that (value).

  • the three elements of the standard User Story format address 3 of the 5 Ws of journalistic story telling:
    • Who wants the functionality
    • What it is they want
    • Why they want it
  • and it seems reasonable to leave out When and Where since the answers are typically “right now” and “in the product” :)