What would reality do?
I like to think of software as a person in a service conversation with the user. The user would be a teenage girl ordering concert tickets or a hung over dad figuring out how to turn on his phone. But the software would always be a professional.
Even better, the software acts and makes decisions as if it were among the world’s best in what it is doing. Why shouldn’t it? As interaction designers, we spend hours preparing for a simple five minute conversation.
One way to apply this could be imagining a conversation between this, the software persona, and a user.
Like users get personas, the application should have one, too
If the software persona is a business professional, try a five-star hotel concierge. If he is so smooth in his service, so polite in his behavior and so smart in his mind, what would he say when the user forgets their password or tries to buy 120 Harry Potter books?
- I’ll take 120 copies
- I must inform you that you are buying 120 copies of the same title, sir. Most of our customers buy just one. Are you sure?
Most web 2.0 software personas seem to be surfers in part time jobs, and that’s fine, because most people love relaxed Californians (or at least people from California do).
- I’ll take 120 copies
- Dude, that’s a lot of books! It’ll take you years to finish them, and you’ll know the ending, man. Are you really really sure?
Both software personas seem credible and like someone you’d trust to help you.
- I’ll take 120 copies
- No.
Not very polite, but could work. Consider this one:
- I’ll take 120 copies
- Okay. Your order will be processed like any other order placed on the web. An RFC 822 compliant email will be sent to you shortly. Our fulfilment team will then immediately begin your order. Please be aware that your order contains one or more items or a count of the same item that will delay your order.
(Talking of ”are you sure”, how many times do you hear that question in the supermarket, when removing stuff from your cart?)
(photo: Kecko on Flickr)
Finding inspiration in call center agents
It might be an interesting exercise trying to imagine your software as an 800 customer service number (as long as you pick one known for its high level of service)
As I mentioned in the previous post, I was on a call center software project, and a part of the research we had in our back pockets showed that these call center agents were true experts.
Service as an instinct
They knew several 300-page catalogs by heart. They knew what color went with what pair of what kind of clothes. When testing our design, we found that they did this without paying attention to it. They serviced the faux caller – being the test facilitator – as efficient as they would any other customer. They even tried to upsell him. My guess is that they didn’t know how not to.
Then why should our software? How would these extremely routined and professional agents handle your users after 10 years of experience and quarterly performance reviews?
UPDATE: Bringing web apps to life with application personas
November 25th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Awesome post – really useful and a perspective I don’t recall seeing anywhere else. Is this a common way of thinking/are there famous references?
November 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
A couple of service personas to consider also – people that do less than we want but in a particular way:
a) The “not so smart but friendly and not obviously destroying our order”-type serviceperson. Most of us (or some of us) are happy to help the service person when they can’t figure it out, if they are not actively screwing it up and are nice about their shortcomings. e.g. if they right it down because they know they will remember it wrong, and read it back to us because they know they could have heard something wrong.
– software that is predictably simpleminded can be good enough.
b) The tight-lipped bartender. You show two fingers, you get two beers, you leave your money, they nod. Everybody is OK with the exchange.
November 27th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I haven’t seen the mentioning of software personas before. I think my reference is Allan Cooper’s description of polite software .
For a few years, it has struck me that software has a tone of voice, and it has characteristics. As humans. Here is Cooper’s list of characteristics for polite software
* Interested in the user
* deferential
* forthcoming and anticipates the user’s needs
* self-confident
* well-informed
* giving as much feedback as possible
* exhibiting common sense
I think software (especially web apps) will move into even more specific personalities, and that’s where the personas would be useful.
It would be interesting to try and collect maybe ten or so software personas and present them on individual sheets of paper to be shown side by side as discussion points for a design team
December 1st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Morten,
Some of these exact ideas have been part of speech recognition telephone applications for over 10 years. In fact, when Cooper’s book initially came out, it was interesting for us to figure out which way to best use the “persona” term. Both ideas, caller personas and application personas are very useful. And we indeed turn to the call center agents, usually the best, of course, for inspiration. There are still problems with the approach, but when done well it works well.
So, right off the bat, I can chip in with advice based on times it hasn’t been done well:
- avoid anything resembling gimmick or cutesy-ness
- don’t invent persona’s. Observe and model.
- if personality elements are detectable, take pains to be consistent through-out the interaction
- learn well how spoken/heard language and written/read language are quite different from each other
- A-B test personas against each other
I think its worth accepting as near-fact that web sites and desktop apps do in fact provoke the perception of personality in the people that use them. I have thought about and observed that many times as I’ve built speech app personas.
Good book discussing all the points I’ve made: Voice User Interface Design (http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Interface-Design-Michael-Cohen/dp/product-description/0321185765).
Phillip