Nando’s, a new approach to Personas
Workshop design | Persona design | User ResearchClient: Nando’sDeliverable: Persona's, workshop toolChallenge
At Nando's, the digital product teams lack a comprehensive understanding of restaurant operations and roles. To bridge this knowledge gap and aid in the design and development of restaurant tools, personas based on roles were deemed necessary.
As someone who has worked on several persona projects, I've noticed that they tend to be forgotten and unused despite their usefulness. Personas are static documents, and unless they are consciously incorporated into design and development practices, they do not have much impact. I aimed to change this by creating a flexible tool that could accompany personas and enable product teams to run workshops independently with minimal UX input.
The solution was simple: a set of conversation prompt cards that could be used in various scenarios to ensure that the user and their needs were always at the forefront of design and development. To use the cards, the product team would first select the relevant persona and then choose relevant prompts from categories such as location, time, delivery channel, personal circumstances, and accessibility. Finally, they would discuss each selected card and brainstorm ways to mitigate emotions and external factors that could affect the user when using the tool.
By using these cards, project teams could ensure that user needs were prioritised and incorporated into their work.
Approach
To develop personas for our products, I chose to segment them by role rather than by attitude. This decision was made because the personas were intended for product teams developing products for job functions rather than to change user behaviour.
I gathered a lot of data from various sources including staff surveys, exit surveys, workshop outputs and interviews conducted during the service blueprint process. This helped me to identify the goals and pain points for each role. Using staff handbooks, I mapped out the tasks for each role. I then set up a series of interviews with stakeholders at head office and in the restaurants to validate the draft personas I had created and to incorporate any missing information.
In addition to persona development, I also worked on developing the concept cards tool. I created draft categories and cards based on previous projects and consulted with various stakeholders and the diversity and inclusion team to ensure that all areas were covered.
Once the draft personas and cards were completed, I tested them with product teams to ensure their relevance and usefulness for all head office departments, not just digital. The first group I tested them with was a team developing a face-to-face training program for managers. The workshop went well and prompted them to consider things they had not thought of before, such as how religious festivals could impact attendees and accessibility for attendees in the venues. I then tested the concept further with digital product teams and incorporated their feedback. I also received design help to ensure the branding was correct and released the personas with a series of talks and workshops to help socialise them in the business.
Early context card prototype in Miro
Outcome
The personas and cards have received positive feedback and teams are using them in different scenarios such as assessing new products, discovering projects, and creating roadmaps and backlogs.