Modeling User Behavior

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Since the data from the research is not immediatly useful, I spend some time structuring and analyzing it. I look for patterns in the data and synthesize these into models that represent users in sufficient detail to inform product requirements and design.

Finding Behavior Patterns

Understanding the behavior of potential users almost always yields valuable Insights into unmet user needs. These insights can provide critical guidance when it comes to developing new products, from product incubation, and creating new functionality, to release planning and product strategy. While it can't eliminate the risk of investing in innovation or entering a new market entirely, it can eliminate a lot of guess work and maximize the likelihood of success.

Here are some examples of behavior patterns identified during the research for a local search product:

1. People start with a broad idea of what they want to see on a trip.

2. People research possible destinations. They narrow their consideration set down by using broad categories. People are using magazines, print media like travel guides, books, websites, blogs, and advice from friends as a source for possible destinations.

3. When the consideration set gets small enough, people's thinking shifts from groups of possible destinations (moderately priced clothing stores in the mission in San Francisco) to evaluating individual destinations from the consideration set.

4. People then compile lists of destinations. These could be written on a piece of paper or a notebook or saved digitally on the home computer or by using a web application.

5. Once people decided on their destination and recorded them in a list, they get directions to the actual physical locations. They want to know where their destinations are physically located and make sure they are not too far apart when they plan their trip. They also make sure, directions to their destination are available to them while they are navigating to their destinations. This could mean printing out maps, buying maps and marking them with a pen, making sure their rental car has a GPS, or having a GPS enabled phone that is able to directly retrieve their destinations from the web application.

6. During their trip, people retrieve directions to the actual destinations. This could be from printed maps or GPS system, or GPS enabled phone.

Mental Models

Identifying users mental models and representing them to understand how users perceive and think about the problem space that the product is solving is critical to provide a solution that matches their needs. At every point of the interaction, the interface presents the user with a number of choices how the user can interact with the system. Well designed interfaces present the user with the choices that she is most likely to take based on her state in the process of interacting with the system.

Context Scenarios

Context scenarios are brief stories how users are expected to interact with the product. They describe the main steps that users go through to achieve their goal and guide the design of the main interaction framework.

Personas

Personas are models of users and consist of goals, behaviors, skills, attitudes, and environments of users that are based on user research. The provide guidance for design decisions and serve as an internal communication tool to create a shared understanding in an organization about who their product is for and what it is intended to accomplish for the user.