Summary
The content team was working with a content-focused initiative. They asked UX to help them understand their actual readers. We proposed to design with them some user personas so they could better focus the articles.
The most important constraint was to keep the whole process in a true lean mindset, since they were evolving fast.
Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
Proto-personas
The firsts steps in this project were focused on a main goal. Enhance the content team’s ownership of the final personas. Make the whole process inclusive and participatory. To do so, we met with the team, to start to create what they thought their users look like.
Since we had no time, and almost no resources, we decided that we’ll be building proto-personas. They were somehow a summary of all the learnings and individual experiences. Taking this information as a starting point was key in order to agree on what we needed to know about the users and focus on the same goal.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The best tool we get from this session, was a collection of modules of information. Those modules were filled only with expertise and feelings. Not real data.
We did a total of four proto-personas (one per meeting), since some key factors were significantly different. This exercice proved to be easy to do by non-UX people, a valuable tool to find consensus among the team, straightforward and pretty fast (one hour per proto-persona).
Surveys
From the modules of information gathered with the content team, we tailored a collection of questions. Every question was set to tackle down a specific topic.
We used Typeform as our survey creation tool because it was easy to use, for us and our users. In order to get as many answers as we could, the survey was intentionally short, easy and straightforward. We measured the response time of some co-workers to make sure it could be completed in less than 5 minutes.
Once everything was up and running, we began to gather real data. We diverted some of our traffic to survey-powered version of our current product.
Refining
In a short period of time (less than a week), we gathered more than 2000 answers. Since the sample size was more than enough to review the results, we started to analyze the results.
There were some interesting findings in the results. Our users were way younger than imagined, less interested in some topics than anticipated, while other topics where very polarized.
All those learnings and data, allowed us to finally turn the proto-personas into data-driven personas.
Final document
Finally, the time to showcase our results with the team.
Lessons learnt
Any given team is able to participate in a UX process. Giving them not only more knowledge of “what is going on” but also share the ownership alongside the UX-team and reduce friction.
Knowing your user is a highly underappreciated asset. It allows the team to know who is really using their product or service. It helps making decisions, planning or even prioritizing what needs to be done.
The team
- UX Designer – Roger Espona
- UX Developer – Eloi Navarro
- Content Data Analyst – Jesús Bosque
- Editor – Daniel Cáceres
- Editor – María Baeta
- Acquisition Specialist – Sophie Steffen