Interview Questions for Persona Development

[Andrea Richeson]

As part of an independent study project (U Texas iSchool student),
I'm developing personas to help guide the BBA site redesign efforts.
I have access to a wealth of demographic, survey and web analytics
information and also plan to speak to the undergraduate program
office about their perceptions of the site and its users.

Please send your advice about what questions to ask (undergraduate
business school students) when doing interviews for persona
development. I hope to tease out user goals and behaviors.  Examples
would help.

Possible questions, so far:

Why do you come the the site?
What do you do when you come to the site?
How do you find information on the site?
What are the things you like most about the site?
What do you like the least about the site?
What would you most like to change about the site?
Is the site easy to use?
Are there other business school sites that you find particularly
useful?

Thanks,
Andrea
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[Audrey Crane]

Andrea, I find more open-ended experience/storytelling questions to be
more useful, for example:

Can you tell me about the last time you visited the site?
Can you think of a time when you couldn't find what you were looking
for on the site?
What was your best experience with the site?

(I think these better than what do you like best/least or self
reporting in answer to "what do you do". Gets more to experience
and goals, and it's more specific. If you'd like, you can ask them
to show you as they tell the story. I think you can make your whole
list into questions more like this.)

Also if you're making personas you want to know:
- how much time on the internet
- home page
- favorite sites
- kind of computer
- search v. browse
- you ever use a handheld device to access information on the
internet?
- when did you first use the site (you want to see lifecycle stuff)

Good luck!


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[suze ingram]

Hi Andrea,

All of your questions foucs on the site. If you want to develop
personas, don't forget to also ask questions about them: try to
learn about who they are, what are their ambitions, motivations,
what's important to them, what do they value.

This will help you to get a broader picture of your users and then
you can write personas about them, rather than about them using the
site (you can use scenarios for that).

Hope this helps,

Suze.


Suze Ingram
User Experience Consultant

suze.ingram@...
@suzeingram
http://suzeingram.blogspot.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/suzeingram




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[Hilary Bienstock]

Andrea,

I think the questions you ask are a great start, but before you get to those questions that are specifically about websites, I'd ask more general questions.

Start out by asking them a little bit about their lives, their routines, etc.  Then go on to questions more specifically about grad school:

- Why are you thinking of going to grad school?
- What do you already know?  Where did you get your information from?
- What questions do you have in general?
- What schools are you considering?  How have you done your research on them?

Try to get at more generally, what is important to them.  Focusing your questions only on websites may cause you to miss some important factors.

Hilary


Hilary User Experience
                   Hilary Bienstock, Principal
 
hilary@...  :: 310.883.5818  ::  fax [phone]




________________________________
From: Andrea Richeson <andrea.richeson@...>
To: discuss@...
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 6:55:36 AM
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Interview Questions for Persona Development

As part of an independent study project (U Texas iSchool student),
I'm developing personas to help guide the BBA site redesign efforts.
I have access to a wealth of demographic, survey and web analytics
information and also plan to speak to the undergraduate program
office about their perceptions of the site and its users.

Please send your advice about what questions to ask (undergraduate
business school students) when doing interviews for persona
development. I hope to tease out user goals and behaviors.  Examples
would help.

Possible questions, so far:

Why do you come the the site?
What do you do when you come to the site?
How do you find information on the site?
What are the things you like most about the site?
What do you like the least about the site?
What would you most like to change about the site?
Is the site easy to use?
Are there other business school sites that you find particularly
useful?

Thanks,
Andrea


________________________________________________________________
Reply to this thread at ixda.org
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[Chauncey Wilson]

You might want to consult the book by Jon Pruitt and Tamara Adlin that
goes into detail on entire persona lifecycle.  There is a wealth of
information.

http://www.amazon.com/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-Interactive-Technologies/dp/0125662513/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246533383&sr=1-1

I'm not sure what the BBA site is for sure but one thing, but one
question I have is "what are the consequences associated with using
the site?"  Some university sites may have significant consequences
like the course registration site or the site for applying for
financial aid.  You could ask students to describe positive or
negative critical incidents in prior use of the site.

Chauncey


On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Andrea
Richeson<andrea.richeson@...> wrote:

> As part of an independent study project (U Texas iSchool student),
> I'm developing personas to help guide the BBA site redesign efforts.
> I have access to a wealth of demographic, survey and web analytics
> information and also plan to speak to the undergraduate program
> office about their perceptions of the site and its users.
>
> Please send your advice about what questions to ask (undergraduate
> business school students) when doing interviews for persona
> development. I hope to tease out user goals and behaviors.  Examples
> would help.
>
> Possible questions, so far:
>
> Why do you come the the site?
> What do you do when you come to the site?
> How do you find information on the site?
> What are the things you like most about the site?
> What do you like the least about the site?
> What would you most like to change about the site?
> Is the site easy to use?
> Are there other business school sites that you find particularly
> useful?
>
> Thanks,
> Andrea
> ________________________________________________________________
> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
> To post to this list ....... discuss@...
> Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
> List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
> List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
>

________________________________________________________________
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[Jared Spool]

On Jul 1, 2009, at 1:55 PM, Andrea Richeson wrote:

> Please send your advice about what questions to ask (undergraduate
> business school students) when doing interviews for persona
> development. I hope to tease out user goals and behaviors.  Examples
> would help.

Hi Andrea,

Generically, I wrote these articles to talk about focus questions for  
this type of research:

Putting Context into Context
http://www.uie.com/articles/putting_context_into_context/

Focus Questions for Field Studies
http://is.gd/1lpB3

and Kate Gomoll & Ellen Story wrote this excellent resource that goes  
into depth on the subject:

The Field Study Handbook
http://www.uie.com/reports/field_study_handbook/

However, we've found that you're better off if you don't try to create  
generic questions, but instead focus on specific functionality or  
content that you're looking at, for instance, online admissions or  
course selection. Because personas work best when they describe  
behavioral differences, you're team will get the best results if you  
think in terms of the behaviors that relate to specific functionality.

Otherwise, you'll run the risk of creating generic personas which  
won't easily map to the individual data you've collected. And, in our  
research on successful persona implementations, most persona projects  
fail when the designers and developers don't adopt the personas  
because they are too generic and therefore can't really inform the  
design process adequately.

Hope that helps,

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jspool@... p: [phone]
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks  Twitter: @jmspool

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