User Archetypes and Importance at UX
Some of the questions that came to my mind when I started designing focused on UX-UI design principles, were related to concepts that I should have actually labeled as priorities when developing any design project, whether it was related to software development or not.
The truth is that although the reiterative academic approach to the importance of defining a target audience that the University gave me was well oriented, I failed to go deeper and question more intentionally the key reasons that justified the importance of the duty to define the happy target audience, better known as the archetype. All of course, as a result of being student and my lack of experience in the job market.
And it´s a common mistake. As graphic designers, we do not go into the methodological process that implies building a formal archetype, but we settle for general data, such as age averages, with specific objectives that the client establishes as the needs of a brand, because of the time that is always against us and many other factors that we do not know if they have been evaluated or not and if we are designing to fulfill, instead of to solve.
We do not reflect on the archetype, because we intentionally want to deliver an incomplete product, but because despite all the existing tools and research methods for the creation of a prototype person, we still do not understand the key role of the end user: it is who defines the brans. The brand exists and make sense, because the user gives it a meaning. No matter what efforts and visual solutions we offer as designers, they will never fit what the brand pretends to be and project, if for the user they do not respond in value nor offer a solution or alternative to their needs and motivations.
And this, although it seems logical and evident, is complex. The UX has allowed me to go deeper and question my method for solving design problems. Suddenly, I´m designing for humans and not brands.
What is an archetype? Why it is important to investigate?
Within the complex system that involves the management of a project or projects that involve creative processes, we should find ourselves at some point in the process, if not from the beginning, with the aim of defining an archetype.
In this sense, we can say that this archetype is the logical starting point that triggers that other processes and gives meaning to the solution of the design problem.
Refining this concept a little more, the archetype is a deep study of the qualities, needs, motivation, interests and human scopes that characterize the user who will interact with the product or service of a brand, taking into account the relevant classifications on the positive, negative, neutral and potential aspects that the process can encompass.
Human behavior is relative, changing, has a socio economic context, a historical reason and by logical deduction, archetypes as well. So, self-assuming anything, means that as designers, we have made decisions based on assumptions about user´s wants and needs and will likely result in a frustrated user, who will ultimately have much to share and attribute regarding a brand, product or service.
Now, archetypes are not real people, as Alan Cooper defines them:
“…are not real people, but represent them throughout the design process. These are hypothetical archetypes of real users. Although they are imaginary, they are defined with great rigour and precision. Actually, we do not “invent” our characters as much as we discover them as a by product of the research process…”
Thanks to this definition, we can say that the research supports and justifies the need to present analyzed and concrete information when delimiting and describing the archetype, since it is going to become a key figure and reason for being, which must always be referred to on multiple occasions during the design process.
When talking about quality in the management of creative processes, the archetype constitutes the conditions and the logical course to follow for the designers and therefore, it also indicates to other participants involved, the real frustration, problems or obstacles to improve with the user and channels them as a priority. It warns about dysfunctions in the brand´s speeches, in the tones of the publications and messages and helps to determine whether the strategy that has been carried out or selected is congruent or not, thus allowing to rethink objectives to obtain more effective results. Of course, this will be defined and led by a person that fulfills a role according to that logic, for example the person in charge of being the DesignOps of the team, because as Miguel Zúñiga mentions in this article “what exactly is DesignOps? And in plain words”.
“This role is to manage operations and optimize them so that teams have everything they need to design, which is not design”.
However, another point I would like to highlight regarding the process of creating this archetype once the research has been carried out, is the importance of giving it a face. Literally, thinking about facial features, a name, an age and story to tell, in other words, creating a character.
This, because empathy plays a fundamental role when developing a methodology and it is more likely that as designers, we can focus our energy more intentionally on a character, than on approximate metrics that only describe genres, statistical averages and gray numbers. The word empathy, is of Greek origin: “empátheia” and means “excited”, under that concept, the challenge of understanding the feelings, emotions and the objective and rational analysis around these needs of a user versus the client chould be the reason of being that triggers that emotion in us, the designers; that is, the ones called to solve that complex problem.
Finally, to conclude the topic, it is important to verify that the information we have collected is submitted to an evaluation with real users, since this will be decisive for the rest of the processes and decisions about the experience that will proposed as a solution, to be previously verified and these tests in turn, validate the archetype. As mentioned by Melissa Chaves in her article “UX User Testing”.
“… we must make a call to educate ourselves about this practice and focus on the fact that the tests are not to lengthen processes, nor to evidence failures, but to detect opportunities for improvement in our service, and that thanks to them we will be able to collect quantitative information, such as the user´s response time, success and failures, effort, number of clicks, etc., and qualitative information, in response to stress and subjective satisfaction”.
I also share some very specific tips that I found in Kambrica, a website that offers training services, user experience design, articles about UX, among other options:
· Qualitative information (usage, habits, preferences, and all other relevant information about the use of the product) is predominantly used for the creation of people
· The interviewer focuses on what users do, what frustrates them and what makes them happy about the product or interface
· It is important to conduct these interviews in the context of product use, not only to listen to what we are told, but also to observe the behavior
· In general, 10–12 one-hour interviews are sufficient
· In general, the 3 main people cover the needs of 80% of the users of the site
· One technique that is sometimes used in to create “negative people”, that is, people for whom we know we are not going to design. And sometimes it´s important to keep them in mind so you know what not to include or where not to focus
· The biggest challenge in creating people is converting the data we obtain during interviews into actionable information that appropriately represents the different types of users of the site or product
Created by: Priscilla Alfaro.
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