Day 3: Personas and Storyboards
Mariya Kopynets and John Wishon
After analyzing the needfinding research of our target market, we developed a set of personas and storyboards to illustrate the data. The process of transforming this information into distinct personas and storyboards helped us to identify the various differences and commonalities among potential users. This activity covered the various demographics, behaviors, needs, and goals of people who were interested in the idea of using an application to help meeting their parking demands.
Needfinding Analysis
The analysis of the data began with a review of the interviews. We discussed all of the concerns, as well as, features people would like to have in the parking application. Needs interviewees mentioned consisted of the following: (1) they wanted an app that’s simple and easy to use; (2) to monitor occupancy of the lots; (3) to purchase temporary parking permits and load funds to their account remotely; (4) to view on the map where their car is currently parked;
(5) to monitor specific parking locations, such as Hopkins, Athena, Gilman, Regents, Equality & Voigt, East Campus 1 that they frequent; (6) to include visual indicators with distinct colors representing A, B, S, V, etc. parking areas.
Our team then discussed the various features interviewees requested. We used the MoSCoW prioritization method (must haves, should haves, could haves, and won’t haves) to decide on necessary attributes our application should have in order to be successful by satisfying various persona types.
Generating Personas
We evaluated the information obtained from interviewees, then categorized them into six different persona types: Student, Faculty, Staff, Disabled, Motorcyclist, and Visitor, and listed the needs, behaviors, and demographics of each group.
Three of the six team-members employed methods for introducing the personas and storyboards inspired by the logic of interaction-designer Bill Verpland. By scathing out three different scenarios per persona, our team illustrated key points interviewees were most concerned about.
Storyboard Scenarios
To engage discussions that would spur ideas we created storyboards. Our goal was to explore ideas rather then merely focus on final results. To enhance visual communication, three of our team members hand-sketched the storyboards following the philosophy of drawing instructor Mark Baskinger. While other three group members used a newer form of technology, PIXTON, which enabled us creating digital storyboards. Both of these methods gave us the ability to transmit intangible ideas into palpable representations.
We created three scenarios per persona illustrating how the BEEP application will solve the goal, keeping the human-app interaction and navigation facets in mind. In the storyboards we particularized the different backgrounds of the six personas representing selected categories of users. Furthermore we integrated various scenarios of problems that BEEP application will potentially resolve. For example, finding available parking at destinations of choice, purchasing temporary parking permits, notifying closeby drivers about open parking spots, etc.
Conclusion
Studying the needs and goals of our interviewees enabled us to find common problems among our target users. Illustrating these findings with various personas and storyboards helped us to gain better insight into the problem and its environment. This stage of discovery and development processes was very helpful to spur ideas for subsequent application design.
