Persona Development
For a large coffee company, we created personas that inspired empathy and the creation of innovative new services. Project teams and leaders use these personas to prioritize investments and measure business impact on an ongoing basis.
The client
A large, global coffee retailer and distributor
Results that matter
We created personas that inspired empathy and the creation of innovative new services. Project teams and leaders use these personas to prioritize investments and measure business impact on an ongoing basis.
How we did it
The Strategic Technology Practices team invited us to build a user model of the clients they serve. We interviewed over 25 representatives across IT, transcribed those interviews and printed each comment on a card, and then held several collaborative sessions to synthesize, distill, and organize the results from the interviews into themes and insights. We used those themes and insights to build personas that reflect the core population of the technology employees. These personas were used by project teams and leaders alike to guide their investments so that they have the maximum positive impact.
When: 2015 - 2016
Design for Business Value Training (ongoing)
If you ever wondered how to generate more focused creativity and innovation in a corporate environment, this class is for you. After two days, participants leave this class with practical experiences, insights, and pragmatic tools to apply the practice of collaborative design into their day-to-day work.
The client(s)
Large software company, global coffee company, medium consulting company, small nonprofit, and sessions available to the general public
Results that matter
If you ever wondered how to generate more focused creativity and innovation in a corporate environment, this class is for you. After two days, participants leave this class with practical experiences, insights, and pragmatic tools to apply the practice of collaborative design into their day-to-day work.
How we did (and currently do) it
This two-day, hands-on, team-oriented workshop is for technology project participants and business stakeholders who want to learn how to use design practices to improve the impact of their work. This course is highly interactive. No prior design or technical experience is necessary, just a willingness to show up and try something new.
Participants learn key principles of user-centered design and apply them to an example project over two days. Graduates gain a better understanding of how to measure project success and how to translate what they learned in class into the real world.
Here’s the full agenda:
Foundations
- Design principles and the case for design
- Linking strategy to execution
Insight
- Measuring business value - metrics
- Assessing capabilities
- User research
- Building personas
- Measuring success- quality in use
- Creating scenarios
- Measuring scenarios through user experience outcomes
- Requirements, business process, and user stories
- Value-driven prioritization
Innovation
- Brainstorming
- Sketching and storyboarding
- Building prototypes
- Early user testing
Implications
- A new way to work - why design matters
- Sustaining the change - team journey map
- 5 working principles
When: 2014 - Present
Business Value Workshops (ongoing)
Through a set of structured discussion points designed to surface key assumptions and expectations, participants commit their undivided attention to a discussion that builds a clear vision of business success for a project or program team. At the end, we have a comprehensive sketch of the measures of success, capabilities, key personas, user scenarios, and some representative process requirements.
The client(s)
Large software company, global coffee company, medium consulting company, small nonprofit
Results that matter
Through a set of structured discussion points designed to surface key assumptions and expectations, participants commit their undivided attention to a discussion that builds a clear vision of business success for a project or program team. At the end, we have a comprehensive sketch of the measures of success, capabilities, key personas, user scenarios, and some representative process requirements. After the facilitated discussion, we disappear for a week, analyze what the group came up, apply some additional rigor, and bring back a more mature version for the team. This framework is used to guide higher quality decisions, increase accountability for results, and enhance collaboration among team members.
How we did (and currently do) it
We invite the organization leadership team, initiative leadership team, or the project leadership team to the discussion, depending on the scale and intention of the discussion. In the case of a project team you see business leaders, solution management, business and technical architects, UX leads, and other key engineering leads.
Through a set of structured discussion points designed to surface key assumptions and expectations, participants commit their undivided attention to a discussion that builds a clear vision of business success for a project, program, or organization. No preparation from workshop participants is required. The more prep that happens, the less learning typically happens in the workshop. The intention is to arrive at a common understanding, which inevitably means leaving some passionate beliefs behind and adopting new insights from other participants. It’s best to show up having thought about things a little, but PowerPoint decks and other documents rarely contribute any value to the discussion.
Learn more about the process from our Planning Guide