Building user-centeredness into an org, one persona at a time.
Context
2016.
Alaska Airlines’ UX design team did not have a shared understanding of its users, and several user segments were not adequately considered in design work.
My role
Head of UX, AlaskaAir.com
Goals
Establish a shared-understanding of who Alaska Airlines must design for.
Enable user-centeredness throughout the Alaska Air organization.
process
I started the process with a series of working sessions with stakeholders to review existing data and begin to organize data around customer segments using a spreadsheet:
We started with customer data that was readily available: demographics, average number of trips, income, etc. We then did research to add additional personal information to the personas: name, place of work, etc. From there, we co-wrote a high level, one sentence summary of each person. Next, a designer and writer crafted a rough draft of each persona which was reviewed and edited (which I reviewed and edited). A visual designer then took over and crafted the final look-and-feel, including creating an additional set of baseball card-sized personas.
data analysis
At right is a spreadsheet I created describing key attitudinal and demographic data for what would become 6 personas. Sorry it is obscured--it is protected by NDA.
resulting personas
sample persona
Content of the persona is obscured to protect IP.
The personas were produced as a document as well as baseball card-sized summaries. (Regrettably, due to NDA I cannot share the final outputs in high resolution)
outcomes
This project was a great example of cross-divisional partnership. As is typical with most larger projects I undertake, I sought to not only produce a meaningful artifact, but to use its creation as a means to get teams to work more closely together.
stakeholder feedback
After building the personas I piloted them on a key enterprise project. Afterward I measured the efficacy of the personas on that project via a survey with stakeholders. Stakeholder feedback to the personas was extremely positive. Here are a few samples:
"I would recommend using personas on projects going forward"
100% of respondents agreed with this statement
"The personas are helping me focus on customer needs on my project"
75% of respondents agreed with this statement
"Personas are a useful tool when creating a new service or experience"
100% of respondents agreed with this statement
Finally, here's what two designers said about the use of the personas on this pilot project: