A week or two ago, I started taking an online class about app development for SAP. Naturally, much of it is centered around Hana Cloud, Hana, and the Web IDE, but I was pleasantly surprised it includes some really good design ideas. One of those I wanted to talk about today. They are calling it the persona, but in general, this is defining who will use the app. More importantly it covers a lot of different pieces about who will use the app.
To properly define the Persona, you need the following pieces of information:
First, try to refine your initial idea for your Fiori app, and always keep in the back of your mind these two questions:
- “What am I trying to accomplish with this app?”
- “Can I explain clearly the context and need for this app in two minutes or with just a few paragraphs?”
Write out the story behind your app and try to keep it to three paragraphs or less, definitely less than one page of text. Make sure your story includes specifics about segmentation, targeting, and positioning:
- Segmentation: Identify which industries or group of customers this app could be for
- Targeting: What industry or group of customers will this app serve specifically
- Positioning: How will this app be optimized to appeal to the target chosen
Next, you want to define the exact person that will be using the app.
- Name – get it down to a specific person if possible, at the least, get it down to a specific job title.
- Background – really get down to the details of the person. What degree of education? family? Work experience?
- Job Title/Role
- Job Responsibilities – be as detailed as possible
- Main Goals – for the app, and even in general
- Needs – what do they really want to accomplish? what information/functionality will allow them to do it?
- Pain Points – what really makes life challenging at work?
- Stakeholders – Who can help make this happen?
- Competencies: rank each of the following from 1 – 5
- Casual User
- Proactive
- Work in Team
- Global Focus
- Innovative
The goal of this exercise to get true in-site into the person you are designing this application for. The better you can understand the user, the easier it will be to design an application the user will use 🙂
In addition, if you are interested in the class, check it out below. So far, it’s worth the time. Thanks for reading,
https://open.sap.com/courses/fiux2
Mike