Reflections from UXPA 2022

Things I learned about personas, new methods and the UXPA community while attending my first UX conference in San Diego, CA.

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) International conference in sunny San Diego, CA. UXPA has been on my radar for a while as a conference to attend. I was thrilled that this year I finally had the opportunity to present at UXPA and attend so many exceptional talks during my time. In this blog, I want to share a few things I learned from the conference.

#1: Personas are a valuable tool, but they can be a distraction if not developed correctly.

This year, UXPA had many great sessions regarding personas. I, like many of my colleagues, have had a long love / hate relationship with personas. At times during my career as a UX Researcher, it was difficult for me to see a tangible impact of personas to an organization.

In my first conference workshop, I attended a session by Andrew Schall, Senior Director of Experience Design Research at Mayo Clinic. In this session, we took Sally, the generic, vague persona, and attempted to revitalize her into a stronger and longer-lasting persona.

Several things may have “killed” Sally — lack of organization alignment, isolation, neglect, to name a few. More importantly, ineffective personas can be detrimental to an organization, causing the following:

• Distractions: Paying attention to the wrong details (e.g., “Sally likes Facebook, so let’s make an integration with Facebook!”)
• Diversions: Making decisions not best on the persona’s best interest
• Disinformation: Misleading or wrong information (e.g., “All Sallys are loyal!)
• Distrust: Causes the persona to be ignored
• Disengagement: Lost of interest in the persona and/or end user

Figure 1. In the workshop, we conducted an “autopsy” on Sally in order to determine what in the persona was useful to an organization and what was not.

In the workshop, we learned ways to combat ineffective personas. One of these strategies includes building a persona without irrelevant details and focusing on the things that define Sally, such as:

• Goals (what does she need to achieve?)
• Domain (how much does Sally know about relevant topics to her goal?)
• Experience (is she new to sales or a sales veteran?)
• Tasks (what activities will Sally complete to achieve her goal?)
• Context (when/where will she perform those activities?)
• Pain-points (what pain-points does she have that the product can address?)

Another strategy for developing effective personas is that it is important to be able to clearly attribute your persona to a specific product. Instead of saying that Sally is diabetic and an overworked sales professional, be specific and clearly indicate Sally’s need (e.g., “Sally needs a way to track her food intake and glucose levels while on the go.”)

In another session with Lisa Vissichelli, Head of Visual Design at Incite, we discussed how to deepen connections with more inclusive personas. Instead of showing images, that can focus the attention on age, demographics, race, and other factors that may influence stereotypes, she suggested using analogies that can do the following:

1. Focus on motivating traits
2. Unifying decisions or motivations
3. Explore characteristics that can be exaggerated into visualization

For example, what if your organization needed a persona for a mother? This persona, let’s call her Sally for old times’ sake, has a goal of looking to bond with her children over relevant shows and movies. Her concern is regarding her children watching too much TV or having access to inappropriate content without security options. Therefore, she has a need to invest in an entertainment option with personalized options such as parental controls.

So now, let’s look at the images below.

Figure 2. Slide courtesy of Lisa Vissichelli of two images that could be used for a persona.

Instead of using the image on the left that may influence the audience with stereotypes dealing with appearance or demographics, try images that reduce distractions from stereotypes, such as the one on the right. Although bears may not have the opposable thumbs needed to change the channel on the remote, this image gets more at the idea of the Sally persona being a protector for her child.

Great! You may have created the perfect persona, and maybe another persona, and another persona for your organization… After a while, it may be difficult to focus and prioritize your personas, causing confusion between different personas and their unique needs. How do you avoid the problem of too many personas?

Schall proposed transforming “Sally” into a macro-persona (making this persona a part of a collective of similar persona types). For example, a macro-persona might be a “remote salesperson,” with different personas falling under this category.

Creating the macro-persona might not be an exact science, but asking questions like “what does the macro-persona represent?” and “how do they differentiate from each other?” could be a good start. For example, a macro-persona might be a “remote salesperson,” and different personas falling under this category could include Sally (who is new to sales and tech-savvy) and Matt (who is a sales veteran but a tech neophyte).

During the conclusion of the workshop, we worked to nurse the Sally persona back to health.

Figure 3. The new and improved Sally persona.

#2: UX methods are constantly evolving for the specific research team’s needs.

This year, I presented a poster with my colleague Jason Telner, a Senior UX Researcher from IBM. In this poster, we shared an analysis conducted of 100 UX Research job postings, to see what skills, research methods, characteristics, etc. that employers are looking for.

Figure 4. Poster by myself and my colleagues Jason Telner, Brian Utesch and Annette Tassone. Learn more about our analysis here: https://uxdesign.cc/ux-research-characteristics-an-analysis-of-100-open-jobs-36f0a7b77bac.

It is no surprise that out of 100 UX Research job postings, usability testing, survey design, and interviews were among the most frequent skills that employers were looking for. However, one thing that I was looking forward to when attending this conference was seeing what new methods I could learn and hopefully apply in my own work. UXPA certainly did not disappoint. One thing I gathered from 3 of the talks I attended was that many methods are being expanded upon and adapted by Researchers, creating new and exciting methodologies. Below I will talk about 3 methods introduced at the conference in particular: the UX Index, Brand Promise Interview and Multiverse Mapping.

UX Index

One method in particular that I am excited to try in my work is the UX Index to assess friction in complex user journeys. This method, presented by Danny Hager and Jon Temple from IBM, allows researcher to:

1. Identify end-to-end tasks
2. Estimate friction for tasks
3. Computes a UX Index score for each task (i.e., how much avoidable friction is in the system?)

In order to do so, Hager and Temple expanded on the PURE method, a usability evaluation performed by experts, in order to quantify friction. The researchers used a ratio approach and quantified the friction in a process by calculating its current PURE score vs. the PURE score of the process with an amount of “target friction”. This latter score with target friction refers to the “happy path,” and would be the ideal experience for the user.

For example, if the current end-to-end task is close to ideal, there will not be much friction; however if the current task causes users to expend a lot of cognitive effort, the ratio will be closer to a “failing” score.

By using this ratio approach, Hager and Temple are able to account for the fact that some tasks will always receive a high PURE score (e.g., doing your taxes is always going to be a more difficult task than posting a photo on Instagram).

Figure 5 & 6. Slides courtesy of Danny Hager’s and Jon Temple’s presentation detailing the steps to conducting the method and how to score the UX Index.

Brand Promise Framework

Another method I was introduced to was the Brand Promise Interview Framework by John Kille, Head of UX at TreviPay. Per Product Marketing Alliance, “a brand promise is a clear, distinct and unique value or experience every single one of your Customers can expect to receive every time they interact with that company.”

Figure 7. Slides courtesy of John Kille detailing the benefits of conducting a Brand Promise Interview.

You may have seen some Brand Promises in your daily life. For example, Starbucks’ brand promise is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” I don’t know about you, but I wish I felt my spirit nurtured after a caramel frappuccino!

In particular, the Brand Promise Interview Framework measures the Brand Promise vs. the Actual Experience. How credible is the promise of the brand? How does the customer experience of the product or service align with the Brand Promise? Are the customer’s expectations of values being met?

Figure 8. Slides courtesy of John Kille regarding developing a protocol for the Brand Promise Interview.

Multiverse Mapping

Lastly, I was able to attend another awesome talk from Lisa Vissichelli regarding the concept of Multiverse Mapping. I have loved using experience maps in the past to visualize a user’s journey. However, the idea of the experience map itself is very linear. User behaviors are certainly subject to change in different environments. For example, how you watch TV at home by yourself vs. with friends vs. with a partner, is likely to be a different experience.

Figure 9. Slide courtesy of Lisa Vissichelli visualizing the concept of the multiverse map.

The multiverse map is an experiential map that explores multiple triggers. What if the people you were with changed? What if the location changed? What if the time of day changed?

Thinking of experience maps in less of a linear fashion could help teams get a better understanding of their target users and how they respond to different environments.

#3: UXPA was a blast and the community is the most welcoming group.

Okay, so I didn’t learn this one in a session, but I had the greatest time at UXPA and it was such a joy to meet so many thoughtful and kind UX-ers! I have not had the opportunity to attend a conference since 2019, and this was my first time attending a UX conference in-person. The opportunity to meet and learn from so many smart people was truly revitalizing for me and I am hoping to see some familiar faces at UXPA 2023 next year!

Figure 10. Photo with some of the UX-ers I met at UXPA 2022!

Theresa Nguyen is a UX Researcher at HubSpot based in Austin, Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent HubSpot’s positions, strategies or opinions.