Problem: The Alteryx Product Management team had previously identified several ad-hoc user personas for their suite of products, but had never validated them. The team wanted to leverage user personas are part of their shift to an Agile development methodology. Over a three month period, I conducted qualitative and quantitative research in order to validate the existing personas, uncovering three new personas in our self-service analytics space.
Role: UX/UI Designer & Researcher
Tools: Quip, Microsoft Suite, WebEx, Illustrator
Process:
- Worked closely with Product Management and UX/UI Manager to develop a project plan, identifying target customer market segments for the Alteryx suite of products (desktop application, server-based product, and cloud-based app marketplace-like product), desired outcomes, and key deliverables.
- Leveraged access to existing Alteryx customer-base during annual customer and partner conference to begin building initial recruitment funnel.
- Developed baseline question set to gather information on customer background, their environment, typical day-to-day tasks, pain points, and product wish list items.
- Scheduled and conducted 45 interviews with a broad cross-section of existing Alteryx customers.
- Synthesized previous persona research and new research data, then lead UX and Product Management team members through an affinity diagramming session to identify themes and patterns.
- Organized themes and patterns into persona groups, and identified Alteryx’s key cast of characters, including a new primary persona “Annie the Data Analyst”, and two new tertiary personas not identified in the ad-hoc personas.
- Developed visual artifacts including pixel-perfect posters, PowerPoint slides, and artwork for the Alteryx UX Design Guidelines site.
- Socialized personas across Alteryx development and QA teams, presenting them during regularly scheduled Sprint Demo.
- Developed, and continue to maintain a “Customer Research Repository” accessible by all Alteryx employees, which contains records of all customer interviews, onsite meetings, and user research activities – using keywords such as “Annie persona” or “product type”, any employee can review customer feedback being collected by the UX/UI and Product Management teams.
Outcome: A total of six personas were captured, and the UX/UI team has continued to gather and validate these personas at regular intervals as we define new features and products. All 20 development teams at Alteryx have embraced our personas in all their feature and user story definitions; successfully helping them to keep “Annie” in-mind as they define and complete their work.
