Persona Development (Johns Hopkins Medicine)

Planning

What

Create user personas for the main types of visitors coming to hopkinsmedicine.org.

Why

Personas help separate user needs and development preferences. Systems can have many requirements, and a set of specific defined users can help manage them.

Research goals

Determine/Create:

  1. User groups - What market segments need to be represented as user profiles?

  2. User profiles, per user group - What relevant characteristics does each user group have?

  3. Task profiles, per user group - What tasks are performed on hopkinsmedicine.org by each user group?

  4. Environmental profiles, per user group - What environmental characteristics (positive and negative) are each user group working with?

  5. (Finally) Personas - What fictitious, yet realistic representation of a person can be created by integrating the previously defined profile-types for each market segment needed. NOTE: We will not create personas for less important market segments.

Anticipated outcomes

We will create three to four user personas to create psychologically “real” people who use the site to help focus site development efforts. Health information seekers are likely to be the most used persona created. Persona development is an ongoing process as more data is collected. The health information seeker persona will likely be broken down into sub-personas over time.

Baseline assumptions/hypotheses

At its core, hopkinsmedicine.org is an information site. It also facilitates some communication between visitors and the health system—mainly messaging (forms) for the purpose of information requests, like patients requesting appointments, students beginning an application process for the School of Medicine, and physician to physician communication. It also connects visitors with services that manage the business side of the health system which are completed on third-party sites, like scheduling an appointment (not just requesting) and paying bills.

Because transactional business isn’t completed on the site, health information seekers are likely to be the most used persona created. Persona development is an ongoing process as more data is collected. The health information seeker persona will likely be broken down into sub-personas over time.

Approach

Review one year of user data from the mobile and desktops site surveys to determine:

  1. User groups - Primary survey question: I am visiting the site today as a…

  2. User profiles, per user group, including survey questions pertaining to language, domain experience, age, gender, expectations

  3. Task profiles - Primary survey question: My primary reason for visiting the site today was to…

  4. Environmental profiles, per user group

    1. Location while completing tasks (inside, outside), Geography, Workspace, Lighting, Sound, Device, Software (some from survey questions, some are assumed for the purpose of creating a well-rounded persona)

  5. Create personas for the most important market segments.

    1. For each segment, integrate the findings from their user profile, task profile, and environmental profile to create a fictitious, yet realistic representation of a person embodying the characteristics of the market segment.

    2. Create a story for each persona as a way to make them more memorable and realistic.

      1. Remember to:

        1. Focus on probabilities, not possibilities

        2. Make them concrete and specific

        3. Integrates info from user-, task- and environmental-profiles

        4. Focus on user needs, not developer desires