Persona share out: stakeholder interviews

I know there are many ways to build personas. Sure, you can build them on assumptions and guesses and just throw something together quickly. But actions like that just leave a bad taste I’m my mouth. I want personas to be based on research, not assumptions.

One major project I am working on now is to create personas for vehicle purchasers. Where I work, one of the products we are working on deals with the consumer automobile buying space. One things we don’t have is personas. An even bigger flow of our organization is that we are designing products without having personas to consult for our design validation. I won’t dwell on this aspect too much. Let’s just say our organization is coming to light and recognizing the importance of having personas.

My task is to build kick-ass personas. I am up for the challenge.

One of the first steps I took in building personas is to talk to several stakeholders who would have interest in these personas. I talked to designers, design leads, product managers and researchers to find out one thing:

What information do you need from a persona?

I asked a few other questions as well, but this was my primary goal in this phase of my research.  I am sharing the information about “What do stakeholders need from personas” is in the attached deck.

Persona Jennifer Blatz Stakeholders 2017

700 Twitter Followers: Thank you!

I am so excited to report that I have reached a huge milestone. I have accumulated 700 Twitter followers. I feel so honored and humbled to have even one follower, let alone 700.

Twitter has become a great avenue for me to stay on top of the latest news in UX, and to share that with the broader UX community. I have to admit, when I first started on Twitter, I thought it was lame. I thought, “I don’t care about what people had for breakfast.” “I don’t care how long they had to stand in line to get their stupid Starbucks coffee.” Now I understand that i you follow the right people, Twitter is a very valuable resource.

Granted, I understand how volatile Twitter can be. You can read this blog and then go on to my Twitter account and it has dipped below 700. I know this can happen at any moment. But my larger hope it so keep this grand number of followers (Wow, 700!) and continue to expand it in the future.

For me, it’s not just a vanity number. I’d be kidding myself to not feel excited and honored to have any followers. But it is as much about being part of a great UX community. And this community expand the world. I feel honored to learn from people all over the globe from who I follow. And I hope to expand my network as well.

If you would like to follow me on Twitter too, find me at jnblatz on Twitter. Thanks.

P.S How cute is that dog in the image? Yep, I am a dog lover. He’s a cutey patutey!!

How do you stay on top of things?

How do you stay on top of things?

Ahhh the golden interview questions that I am sure every UX designer has heard at least once.

  • Where do you go for resources?
  • What Websites do you visit to learn more?
  • What tutorials or other resources do you use to learn a new software or service?
  • How do you stay on top of the latest trends?
  • What software are you using for (fill in the blank)?
  • What is your “best practice” for (fill in the blank)?

Yes, we have all asked these questions, or heard them asked, or wanted to sleep but could not because these questions are bouncing around in our heads.

So I would like to open this post up for discussion. Because I feel like I am wounding about these types of questions all of the time. I want answers. Can you provide some of the answers to the above questions? Or do you have a resource that might answer them? I know I don’t get a lot of traffic on this blog, but if you do swing by and feel like chatting about this topic, I would be forever grateful.

Now: Let’s talk!