Communicating Research Results

Personas

Problem: Following actual interviews based on the protocol I had previously designed, I needed to provide this information to stakeholders in the form of a persona.

Approach: Reviewing interview notes and recordings (I do not have permission to share the recordings), I created grouped comments and responses according to similarity and type. I then evaluated the most common themes in responses, along with participant demographics, and distilled the most common elements into a persona.

Results: The above persona was the final result. This was also the very first persona I ever created. We had learned about common elements of personas - goals, pain points, behaviors, as well as a short bio to help truly personify the aggregated goals and make them feel less abstract. However, in this case, I felt developers of a reminder app could benefit from a handy reference to typical busy day, so I included the extra element of a timeline.

Lessons Learned: In addition to learning about the role personas play in the development process, I learned that it is important to consider not only the needs of the users in developing reference material like this, but also the needs of developers. A relatively small simple addition like this can help guide the mindset of developers and keep critical needs at the forefront of development.

Presentations

Problem: UX practicioners must be able to provide results to stakeholders in a variety of methods. While this is most commonly done through various reports and deliverables, meetings and presentations are typical as well. I was required to present findings of a hotel research project, contained to less than 10 minutes.

Approach: This presentation was due during Covid-19 lockdowns, so we were unable to provide presentations in person. Leadership had recommended producing an automated PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. However, extensive past experience has taught me that glitches often happen with these programs, so I chose to use my knowledge of video editing to create an actual video presentation mimicking an automated slideshow. This eliminated the risk of errors during the presentation, and allowed more precise control over composition.

Results: This video presentation was created based on real research on a specific hotel. For this portfolio publication, branding for the hotel in question has been removed and replaced with generic placeholders for the sake of confidentiality.

Lessons Learned: I was able to produce the required presentation using different tools than had been recommended. This reinforced my tendency to draw on my wide variety of knowledge and skills to achieve the same results with added benefits. I am highly adaptable, and try to think outside the box to find the most effective solution for any problem. This decision was cleared with the stakeholder prior to committing.