Beginner/ Intermediate Users
As a team of 2 UX Designers (and in collaboration with the Product Management team), we were tasked with learning about and developing a new persona. The goal of the new persona(s) was to guide the UX team in designing a new graphics app targeted towards beginner and intermediate designers and ground the PM team’s decisions.
How did craft the personas?
User Interview Recruitment
Where did we find users to interview?
CorelDRAW Survey Respondents
Combed data and reached out to select CorelDRAW users for an interview
(10 interviews)
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Local Design Community Call-out
At design events (like CreativeMornings), we put out a call for interviewees
(4 interviews)
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Existing Interview Data
Interviews completed for other projects contained useful information to apply
(3 interviews)
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Interviewee Quotes
“I’m pretty tech savvy. Not design savvy”
“The thing that always wowed me about Corel is what could be created with it”
“I’m not a graphic artist by any stretch of the imagination”
“Are you ever going to come out with a version of CorelDRAW that mere mortals can afford?”
“I’m not very good at drawing”
“The [Powerpoint] templates are nice, but it would be good if you could modify them for specific needs”
“The problem with being self-taught is that you don’t know what you don’t know”
Regarding AI: “Boom, you’ve got it. How creative is that?”
“I’m not intimidated... I’m just going to research and figure it out”
Interview Takeaways
We pulled out key points (called attributes) and gave each attribute a scale or categories. Each interviewee was plotted on that scale or placed in a category as a point of comparison to other interviewees on a specific topic.
Experience with Vector Software
No Experience
Some Experience
Little Experience
More Experience
Experienced
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Intent of Design
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Monetary Value
Personal Value
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Educational Value
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Communicating Visual Information
Artistic Value
Side Hustle
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Who are they designing for?
Personal Projects
Volunteer Association
Self-Employed
Corporation-Employed
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Educational Background
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Formal Design Training
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No Formal Design Training
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Meet our Persona!
Darren - The Aspirational Creator
What is Important to Darren:
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Interested in creating unique graphic art
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Works in a profession that may not even be related to design, but requires design tools
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Wants to begin exploring graphics software
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Wants to create a side business using graphics software
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Doesn’t want their creativity to be limited by the software
Environment
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Not a professional designer, but may be doing creative tasks for a small team who haven't hired a full-time designer
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Their role may have shifted to include social media postings, or other more visual ad targeting internal or external
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No in-house specialist, or no budget can be made for a professional designer for specific tasks
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Partially experienced with template-based design tools but wants to do more and is ready to explore more advanced tools.
Aspirational designers may be:
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Creating on the side - wish to create custom work that they can share online or through print-on-demand services
What does Derek do with similar software?
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Has none/little experience with CDGS or similar graphic software
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Found professional graphic tools to be intimidating
Outputs and Projects
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Social Media Posts
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Logos
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Posters, Flyers, Advertisements
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Graphic Art
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T-shirts, Stationary, merchandise
Skills & Tools
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No formal design training
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Has experience in their field
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Eager to learn new tools
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Beginner to intermediate skill level
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Somewhat familiar with template-based design tools and mobile design apps
Pain points and concerns
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Experiencing more demand to create visuals
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Growth in expanding to web-based posting on social media
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Wishes to create unique designs and not use recognized templates
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Wishes to output their work efficiently
More coming soon!
UX Research: Building new Personas for an Innovation Project
Design Researcher
My Role
My Contribution
Interviewing
Interview Analysis
Persona Creation
UX Team
Product Management
Stakeholders
Timeline
2 months
How might we learn about our new target users to better understand their needs before designing a new product?