The process and method of building user portraits

User portrait refers to a labeled user model abstracted from information such as the user's basic attributes, user preferences, living habits, and user behavior.

Preface

During the product development process, product, design, R&D and other personnel often mention words such as "we need to design for target users" and "who are our users". This shows that identifying the target users is crucial in the product development process. As a design tool, user portraits can help designers break away from the inertial thinking of "designing for themselves", focus on target users, discover core values, empower products, and are widely used in various types of Internet products.

This article will introduce the concept and value of user portraits and how to build user portraits from 0 to 1. I hope that after reading it, you will understand the relevant theories of user portraits and it will help you to learn more about user portraits in depth.

1. What is User Portrait?

There are currently two commonly used user portrait concepts in the industry, one is User persona, and the other is User portrait, which is also translated as User profile.

The first user portrait, namely User persona

According to Alan Cooper's "About Face", it is a representative virtual user model abstracted from the product's observation of the real world, sometimes also called a composite user archetype. This concept was first proposed by Alan Cooper in the book "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" and has been continuously improved in many subsequent books.

The main features of this portrait are as follows:

(1) Describe a user profile including role description and user goals

The role description here refers to name, age, position, income, occupation, etc. This type of role description is mainly to make the user portrait richer, more real, and concrete; the focus is on user motivation, and user goals are their motivation.

(2) Can represent similar user groups or types, or individuals

User persona is abstract and virtual, representing a typical user group. Although it can also represent individuals, individuals are not actually independent individuals, but are synthesized from actual observation and research.

(3) Must be context-specific - product-specific behaviors and goals

User persona studies how users use a product in a specific context, focusing on their behaviors, attitudes, abilities, motivations, etc. within a certain range. Even for the same role, the motivations in different products are different. Generally speaking, it is not easy to reuse between different products, and the entry scenarios of different types of products need to be considered.

The second type of user portrait, namely User portrait

It refers to the labeling of user information. By collecting multi-dimensional information data of users (such as demographic attributes, social attributes, behavioral preferences, consumption habits, etc.), and conducting statistics and analysis on them, the overall picture of user information can be abstracted. Compared with user persona, it focuses more on data mining and labeling system construction.

The main characteristics of this type of portrait are as follows:

1. Authenticity : It collects real information about each individual, such as static information like demographic attributes, as well as dynamic information about user behavior.
2. Timeliness : User dynamic information is not static and its changes can be tracked in real time.
3. Wide coverage : It can monitor both the content that users are interested in and the content that they are not interested in, with many dimensions and coarse and fine granularity.

The following is a brief comparison of the differences between these two types of user portraits:

This article focuses on the first user persona. As for how to create data portrait labels and applications, it will be introduced in later articles and will not be repeated here.

2. The value of user portraits

As a design tool, user portraits play a role throughout the entire product life cycle. Combining several stages of design work, the value of portraits is mainly:

1. Before design: Help establish product positioning and goals
2. During design: Help establish design goals, design strategies and guidelines
3. After design: promote other work, such as marketing, operational activities, sales planning

3. User portrait construction process

In general, user personas mostly use qualitative research methods to divide roles. The main sources of information include: anthropological research, situational surveys, observation, interviews, desktop research, etc., and specific implementation will be slightly adjusted according to business conditions.

This article combines the experience of Kujiale-Kuaida and Yingke two business lines to sort out the process and methods of building portraits from 0 to 1, as shown in the following figure:

Step 1: Establish goals and portrait dimensions

Clarify business goals and user roles. Different roles and goals will result in different information collection, which will in turn affect the final portrait results. Therefore, before making a portrait, you need to consider the purpose of the portrait clearly. After clarifying the goal, you can combine the goal with the role to develop the portrait information dimension.

There are 2 points to note here:

1. What is the general information?
2. How to filter out target users?

Regarding the first point, the general information dimension can be combined with the components of the user portrait and selectively extracted based on the business situation. It should be noted here that there are slight differences in the information dimensions of to C and to B. For example, to C products will focus on the user's gender, age, family situation, hobbies and habits, while to B products will not pay much attention to these. They will focus more on the user's work ability, work content, usage of work, etc.

Summary of elements of user portrait:

Regarding the second point, since we are creating user portraits, we need to cover as many different users as possible. Who should we turn to for research? Here are 2 small tips.

Tips1: User screening conditions

Find products and operations that are closely related to the business, and discuss and determine user types together. During the discussion, we will define eligible users, come up with a user screening criteria table, and then invite users based on this table.

Tips2: Job function screening

For some products with clear division of B-type job functions, users can be found based on job functions. In actual operations, it is necessary to consider the actual situation to see whether it is necessary to distinguish between management positions and ordinary executive positions.

Taking the KuaiDa intelligent design business line as an example, in the user portrait project

Business goal: Comprehensive understanding of user characteristics, product awareness, usage scenarios and pain points

Target users: The goal is to have a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the users of the quick-build tool. In the questionnaire method, both D-end and B-end users who have visited and opened the quick-build tool are counted. When deeply exploring the scenarios and pain points, combined with the feedback from the questionnaire, the D-end and B-end focus on finding active users and subdivide the user identity types.

The combination of these two factors ultimately sorted out the user portrait dimensions of KuaiDa.

Step 2: Establish research methods

After establishing the dimensions of portrait information, it is necessary to combine factors such as users, time, energy, and funding to select appropriate research methods to collect information. There are three common research methods:

• Qualitative research : such as interviews, secondary data research
• Quantitative research : such as questionnaire surveys and data analysis
• Qualitative + quantitative : a combination of the above two methods.

How to choose each method? You can make your choice based on the differences in research methods, the product's life cycle, and actual time, energy, and funding.

(1) Differences in research methods

Quantitative and qualitative are relative concepts. Quantitative methods focus on understanding "what is", that is, discovering what users do and digging out factual information. The qualitative method focuses on understanding "why", that is, exploring the reasons behind user behavior in order to understand the phenomenon.

(2) Research methods corresponding to the product life cycle

• Infancy stage : During this period, the product has not yet been finalized and the target users are still exploring the market. You can try to find expert users or users of competing products through interviews, focusing on exploring the scenarios in which they use the product and their core pain points, so as to verify the MVP version.
• Growth stage : At this stage, the product has entered a period of rapid user growth. As the scale increases, users will be stratified and more and more problems will be exposed. You can try to stratify users through quantitative methods, and then assist with qualitative understanding of each type of user and solve problems in a targeted manner.
• Mature stage : The user base tends to be stable. On the one hand, the product needs to maintain stability, continue to meet the needs of existing users, and improve product experience; on the other hand, it needs to try to break through and find market segments to tap into new growth points. You can try to explore the blue ocean qualitatively first, and then verify it quantitatively.
• Decline stage : Qualitatively understand the reasons and adjust products.

Taking the KuaiDa intelligent design business line as an example, we took into account factors such as purpose, product cycle, research method, time and energy, and adopted a combination of data + questionnaire + telephone interview methods.

Step 3: Plan and collect data

After clarifying the goals and methods, the entire research needs to be refined, a specific and detailed implementation plan needs to be developed and implemented, and the overall pace needs to be controlled to collect effective information.

For example, if the questionnaire method is used, it is necessary to design the questionnaire - select respondents - distribute the questionnaire - and collect the questionnaire. If the interview method is used, relevant information before, during and after the interview needs to be prepared. When using different methods, there are different things to pay attention to in the execution phase. You can refer to the reference books and articles on the relevant methods specifically, so I will not go into details here.

Step 4: Analyze data and cluster roles

After collecting and organizing valid information in the third step, it is necessary to identify key behavioral variables, match the surveyed users with the behavioral variables one by one, and identify differentiated behavioral patterns.

When looking for variables that may lead to behavioral differences between users, the author has summarized some dimensions for reference based on past experience.

When mapping users based on behavioral variables, there is no need to pursue absolute accuracy, as long as the mapping is relatively clear. After sorting out, it can be observed that certain user groups are concentrated on several behavioral variables, which form a significant behavioral pattern, thus clustering into a certain role type. By analogy, several different behavioral patterns can be discovered. To ensure comprehensiveness, it is best to traverse after mapping to check whether there are any missing users or variables.

Taking KuaiDa as an example, when users use intelligent design tools, their behavioral variables can be subdivided into: occupation type, professional skill level, usage method, factors they value, etc. After matching them one by one, they are clustered into several major role types. For example, one type pursues speed and pays attention to the overall effect; the other type focuses on the process and pays attention to details.

In addition to the above methods, for to B enterprise-level products, when the user's functional attributes are very strong, enterprise functions can be used as the basis for dividing role types. At this point, you only need to select typical samples for each type of role, ensure completeness, and conduct the survey.

Step 5: Comprehensive features and output portrait

After completing the role clustering, we sorted out the dimensional characteristics of each role, such as behavior, goals, pain points, etc., to form the basic framework of the portrait, and gave a detailed description of each role's attribute information, scenarios, etc. to make the portrait more full and realistic.

At this time, please note:

1. Although there are many portrait templates available online, they are only for reference. You need to create your own business portrait based on the information you have collected.
2. It is best to attach a photo that matches the character's characteristics and the environment to each portrait, so as to convey a more emotional message and create a stronger sense of immersion.
3. Establish portrait priorities. According to Alan Cooper's suggestion, a product should not have more than three user roles. After drawing the portrait, it is necessary to evaluate the importance of the role based on the size of the population base, revenue potential, competitive advantage, business planning and other dimensions, and define the main role, secondary role, supplementary role, etc.
4. As a design tool, user portrait is not static and needs to be continuously iterated over time. When the product has accumulated a certain number of users, quantitative methods can be used to verify it and supplement and optimize more dimensional information.

4. User Portrait Framework

Taking Kuaida as an example, the portrait of a certain role - a sales guide is as follows:

Step 6: Combine products and implement portraits

The value of user portraits can only be reflected if they are implemented and help product design; otherwise, they are just castles in the air.

After creating the portrait, you can organize and share the results so that team members can reach a consensus on the users to be served, and then explore new opportunities or improvements for the product, and gradually implement them in product design and promotion and marketing. How to apply user portraits before, during and after design will be further explained in subsequent articles, so this article will not go into details.

Summarize

This article introduces the concept, value and construction process of user portraits. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. You can try to put it into practice in your daily work. Currently, Kujula is gradually building a complete user portrait covering the entire company and all business lines from 0 to 1. We will continue to explore and improve the portrait construction method in this process.

Author: Zhile, Ah Yi

Source: Cool Home User Experience Design