Case Studies - Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics - page 269

problematic task is rather unusual and relevant only to a small number of users
at a very specific point in their progression from enquirer to student.
10.4.3 Example 3: Triangulation for Iteration of Personas
The two previous examples demonstrate the use of measurement techniques for
specific changes. Our third example illustrates the use of metrics for one of the
UX tools we use all the time: personas.
We first started using personas after Caroline Jarrett learned about them from
Whitney Quesenbery at the Society for Technical Communication Conference in
2002. They were based on our experience of usability test participants over a few
years—by that point we had been usability testing since 1998—and Sarah Allen
validated them against various internal data sources at the time. With Whitney's
help, we've been using, updating, and revalidating the personas ever since. Pruitt
and Adlin (2006) include a short overview of our experience with personas.
For example, the Open University introduced Foundation Degrees, shorter
degree programs focused on training for particular jobs that are somewhat
similar to the U.S. “Associates Degree.” To help with our design activities around
Foundation Degrees, we added in a persona, “Winston,” who was interested
in the Foundation Degree in Materials Fabrication and Engineering. But we
discovered that we weren't meeting Winstons in usability tests. Viki Stirling
had the idea of doing some visit tracking to see whether the routes through
the site that we envis-
aged for the perso-
nas were actually
sufficiently based in
data. She discovered
that most of them
were, but Winston
really wasn't justi-
fied, the numbers
just weren't there.
Winston became
Win, interested in
the Foundation
Degree in Early Years
(see Figure 10.24 ).
Lindsay's rea-
sons for studying
are slightly different
to Win's, and she's
focusing slightly
more on costs and
fees—but overall,
she's close enough Figure 10.24 Persona “Win” at the start of her journey to becoming a student.