Who are the users of the website? > Create Personas

[iteles]

Moved these questions from @nelsonic to their own issue from #5 (comment) so that we are able to discuss each topic separately:

1. Users?

1. Who are the "users" of the Website?

• The "Piqued Drinker" - someone who is already aware and or has a desire to be more mindful of their drinking. The vast majority users of the website are the "mindful drinkers".
  • Are the drink buyers further segmented?
    e.g: http://howtorunapub.co.uk/uk-pub-customer-demographics-behaviours/
    • Students / "Young & Free"
    • Nesting couples (no kids)
    • Affluent Young Professionals (no kids)
    • Families (with kids)
    • Mums & Dads (not taking kids to pub)
    • "Empty Nesters" (older people whose kids have left home)
• Venue/Pub Owner/Manager - the people for whom incremental patrons (customers) will have a meaningful impact on bottom line.
• Product/Brand Manager
• Club Soda Admin

Do we have a "persona" for each type of user for the Website or at least clearly defined "roles"?
(so that we can write user stories for each one? and can we have a label fore each user?)
Are each of these these users "active" or "passive" (do they create or simply consume content?) do we want them to create content? (will that drive revenue for Pubs/Brands and "CS")

---

Todo

• Create a Person Card for each of the "users" of the CS app (@jussi-club-soda's comment below)

  Note: initially we only need one Persona for consumers; we can create more as required.

  • Sketch a simple avatar/character for each Persona. e.g:
    
  • Name each Persona (preferably an alliteration) e.g:
    • Connor or Cora the "Consumer"
    • Peter or Puja the "Pub Manager"
    • Diego the Drink Brand/Product Manager/Owner
    • Amanda the "CS Admin"
    • I'm fairly sure someone else can derive better names, go for it!
• Describe the Persona's Facts:
  • Age (either exact or range)
  • Background (one liner)
  • Motivations
• Pain Points? e.g: with Alcohol products and with finding products/venues using the CS site/app.
• Goals? e.g: cut down on alcohol for {reason}
  • Why do they need the CS website/app in order to achieve their Goal?

@Cleop please estimate how long it will take to create the Personas
and work with @ctrembath on creating them.
Our objective is to tell the story of each of the users in card form to help:

• All current (& future) team members and (internal) stakeholders
  to have a clear understanding of and empathy for the "users".
• Funders/Customers to understand the mission of the CS Product
  and have confidence that CS are the "right" team to solve the challenge.

[jussi-club-soda]

Four user types:

1. Consumers - passive browsers mainly, but we would like them to engage eg by nominating great venues to Club Soda, telling us of any errors/mistakes on the site, new drinks they have found that aren't on the guide etc. In theory this is the entire UK population over 18 years old, but there are likely to be some key segments. We usually think in terms of:

• people cutting down/quitting drinking - the main Club Soda membership, age mostly from 35 to 55, slightly more women than men, from all over the country and from all backgrounds
• health, fitness, yoga, meditation types - looking for healthier things and drinks, younger, more female, more urban, more educated
• "never drank" - mostly people in their 20s who have never been (big) drinkers, looking for other sober people for company, nice drinks to have & nice venues to have them in. more urban, educated, also health conscious etc.
• religious reasons/faith - probably a smaller group in terms of our website use, but we'd like to cater for them as well!
• drivers - older, more rural, want to drink an adult non-alcoholic drink when out at Sunday lunch with family and driving home
• pregnant/breastfeeding/trying women - bored with coke, desperate to find something decent to drink for a couple of years

2. Venue owners/managers - busy people in a very competitive marketplace. Some will never get anywhere near this site, some will jump to get listed, most are somewhere in the middle. We need to make the business case to them (see nudgingpubs.uk for our initial research on how to do this, still relevant). Will not pay for a listing, but if it's free and quick to do we can convince them to do it. Active content creators (their listing) and also the "victims" of our nudges! The idea for the Guide came from our research on how to make venues more welcoming for customers who want to drink less alcohol or not at all. If we can get them signed up and telling us what they have behind the bar, we can assess them (Club Soda Score) and use the information to give them tips on how to improve. Some of the most savvy ones may be interested in some data and regular updates of their profile, but assume majority are happy to just get listed and be given occasional updates via email.

3. Drink brand owners/managers - they want to get their product in front of customers: both individual consumers, and venue managers. A listing on the Guide for them means publicity and sales - for which they are willing to give Club Soda money in return. Key in our business model for the Guide. In an ideal world they would set up and maintain their own listings, but to begin with we're happy to do that for them (the information needed is fairly simple, and not likely to change very often). They are interested in data: where are my drinks sold? are people searching for them and what search terms do they use? who are my competitors? what do people like/dislike?

4. Club Soda/admins - keep an eye on any new listings, track usage and other data, analyse for insight and content (and sales of the same), produce content (blog, articles, events, listings of great venues on behalf of their owners etc).

[nelsonic]

@jussi-club-soda thank you for adding these detailed user types. 👍

@iteles I have updated the issue description with a Todo List (Task) to create Personas.
This will be an exceptionally worthwhile investment over the lifecycle of the CS Site/App
for clearly communicating with current/future internal/external team-members/stakeholders.

@Cleop please take a look at this task and estimate it. Thanks!

[jussi-club-soda]

We will be doing some of this today at a workshop with beer producers - we can probably recycle some of the outputs from there.

But this sounds to me like something we should have already done before/during the design sprint?

How much value is it going to add now? Especially if we only do 1 consumer persona - there are so many of them that I struggle to see the value of just doing 1 (which one? and what about all the other kinds?)...

[nelsonic]

@jussi-club-soda great news that you are doing the workshop with beer producers and there might be some re-useable persona data we can make into more personas for the product development. 🎉

To clarify the task above (assigned to @Cleop) is to "timebox" persona creation. ⏱
By intentionally limiting the Consumer persona to One (initially) we focus our attention
on "understanding" (empathising with) that one user and "solving" their problem.
We then take the implementation of the feature (solution) and test it with the user.

Even if we have enough data now to create 10+ Consumer Personas,
it would be a distraction (in the short-term) because we cannot solve everyone's problem at once.

We will absolutely be adding to the Consumer Personas cards over time as we expand
Our objective for this Task is to:

• Define the "lowest hanging fruit" user who has a particular "pain point" or "goal" we can address immediately. e.g: "Cora is 47, works in Finance and wants to cut down because of {reason}."
• Capture their details in a Persona Card (print cards so we can put them on the wall!)
• Target user stories to the Persona (so that everyone in the team is clear who we are building for)
• Build the Sprint feature(s) with the Persona in mind.
• Find "test subjects" who fit the Persona and ask them to UX-test the feature(s) once built.
• UX-Test the features and get qualitative feedback from the (real/prospective) user.
  • Was she able to accomplish her mini-goal (as per the script/instructions) using the site/app?
  • Did she "give up" because the UX was frustrating?
  • How likely is she to re-use the product or recommend it to someone else ?
  • What improvements did we spot while watching her (attempt to) use product/feature?
    • Are those improvements already captured in the backlog? (can we work on them next sprint?)

This is a much more focussed way of building as we have a precise definition of the user,
as opposed to a nebulous "person who wants to cut down on their alcohol consumption".

As for having the personas before/during the Design Sprint, we agree.
There appears to have been a lack of clarity (possibly stemming from a miss-communication), we thought the personas already existed, but as it happens, they are not (yet) "formalised" into "cards", therefore we are "filling in the gap" now.
This is not to say that the efforts of the Design Sprint were in any way "wasted";
the outcome/output of the Design Sprint is super valuable "high level" UX/design
which we will be using throughout the dev lifecycle.
What we need now is to focus on building the increments of useful functionality
with a specific target user (Persona) in mind.

Having Personas now (and for the life-time of the project) adds immense value.
Focussing on one Consumer first is just a way of being targeted.
In 6 months time you will have all the Consumers (probably 30+) captured/codified.
We (@dwyl) only need to help with defining the first few to get the initial features/functionality
built & tested before launch in October. We can certainly help with defining many more personas,
but we must be "strict" now and only focus on a single Consumer.
Thanks! ✨

[Cleop]

[Cleop]

Here is a printable pdf of the personas so that you can print them and put them on the wall at CS HQ:

Club Soda - User Personas.pdf