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Personas are fictional characters that carry the needs, goals and behavioural patterns of our real and potential users[1]. Personas are created to guide the user experience team into creating a better or new solution.

Developing our personas at the beginning of the project will inform us of expected app functionalities, help uncover gaps, or will highlight new opportunities[2]. The key is to prioritize the needs of the most important users without compromising our abilities to meet the needs of less important users[3].

In order to get main characteristics of our persona, we went back to the data gathered from the interviews and created a Persona Mapping:

The mapping can be seen with more details in Mural.co.

During this exercise each of us will develop one persona based on the potential audiences of the Lotto app, we brainstormed over each one of them to organize elements into persona groups that represented our main users and we refined the personas and separated them into categories. We found that in each persona there were behavioural patterns that overlapped.

According to usability.org [4], there are some questions to ask during a persona development that will help us construct a snapshot of our users and we used these to develop a persona, each of the questions is designed to reach different objectives:

• To define the purpose and Vision of the Lotto App.
• To get a description of the user.
• To find out user motivations.

To answer each of the questions we went back to the data of our user research, which showed us personal, professional and technical elements of our most important users and also illustrated their needs.

Define the Purpose/Vision for the Lotto App

The purpose of the Lotto App is to allow people to play its existing range of draw games. The purpose is also to allow users to check the numbers of previous games. These are the main purposes of the Irish National Lottery app. The main goal of the Irish National Lottery app is to make it easier for people to play Euromillions or Lotto games without the need of going to a shop to buy tickets.

Objective: Describe the User

Personal

Based on the user research, the majority of the users that play the Lotto using the app (22.5%) are within the age brackets of 25-34 and 35-44, a slight majority are male and have received a higher education. It’s worth noting that data is probably skewed as our user pool was limited to our social networks.

Professional

On the professional side, we made a few assumptions. For this persona he has 6 years experience in recruitment and he works as a Recruiting Associate for a US technology company.

He wants to buy tickets every time there’s a big jackpot as he feels smaller prizes won’t make a big change to his life. The user uses the Lotto app because it’s more practical than going to the shop.

He hears about the big jackpots from co-workers during the coffee/lunch breaks. From time to time he receives a notification or an email from the Irish National Lottery about large jackpots.

He leaves work at 17:30, by the time he arrives at home he tends to forget about to buy the ticket, for that reason he buys tickets during work or during his breaks. He usually buys the tickets on the day of the draw.

Technical

The user is comfortable with smartphones and personal computers. He considers himself an advanced user, for his job position, he uses LinkedIn and Jobs.ie to recruit new employees, he also uses the Google Calendar to set interviews. For his personal use he uses Facebook and Instagram with frequency (a few times a day), and also Whatsapp to be in touch with his family and friends. He spends 8 hours a day on the internet.

Objective: User Motivation

The user main motivation is to get rich, every time he plays he dreams about things he will do when he wins the jackpot (buy a new car, move to a sunnier place). Even knowing that odds are not on his side, the user is chasing a thrilling experience and he needs the Lotto app to bring that experience for him in a quick way that fits his lifestyle.

Defining Behavioral Variables

In order to create the user personas, we gathered the behavioral patterns that emerged from focusing in the following types of variables [3]: activities, attitudes, aptitudes, motivations and skills. The initial result of this exercise can be seen in the gallery below:

And below is the digital version that can also be seen in full on Mural.co.

[1] How to create personas. (2017, November 17). Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts-user-guide-v2/how-to-create-personas
[2] Brown, D. (2016, November 11). How to Build a Problem Statement. Retrieved from https://medium.com/eightshapes-llc/how-to-build-a-problem-statement-d1f21713720b
[3] Cooper, A. (2014). About face: the essentials of interaction design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
[4] Personas. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

 

After grinding all the user research, interviews and mapping behaviors. Meet our User Personas.

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Vision and Problem Statements

Problem statements allow us to align efforts towards a common goal, define what the goal is and care about meeting that goal [1]. 

In order to create these vision and problem statements, we follow the guidelines from Matt Lavoie in his article on Medium about how to define a problem statement. According to Matt, a problem statement does not:

• Provide a solution
• Assign blame
• Get too large
• Address multiple problems

It should also point out at a situation that needs changing [2]. On the other hand, the vision statement is an inversion of the problem statement and should serve as a guideline for the designs and prototypes [2]. The vision statement is led by the user’s needs and how the company will benefit from its implementation.

Problem Statement

The Lotto app was designed to give the players an easy and quick way to participate in different draws (Lotto, Euromillions, etc.) but we have observed that the Lotto app isn’t meeting this goal. Stephen is not being notified properly of the next big jackpots, he also is not allowed to play quickly without topping up his account, and also he is presented with a UI that is disconnected with Stephen’s dreams of winning a big prize. How might we design a more enjoyable experience for Stephen and increase the number of games being done throughout the Lotto app?

Vision Statement

The new design of the Lotto app will reduce the amount of friction between users and their goal of playing the draws, and without the issues of a notification system that is not catered for the user, a wallet that requires topping up for every draw, and a UI that is disconnected from the ultimate goal that is winning the lottery. This will dramatically improve the Lotto’s customer satisfaction and lead to an increase in the tickets being sold via the Lotto app.

Scenario 1. Stephen users the Lotto app to buy a ticket

Stephen goes to work in the morning. He receives an email from the Lotto saying there is a big draw coming tonight, as Stephen is at work, the email is ignored and he thinks to himself: “I will buy the ticket later”.

During the coffee break, one of his colleagues mentions about a big draw coming up for the Lotto. Stephen decides to buy the ticket, he takes his phone out, opens the Lotto app and as the app already knows his preference, it already displays the Lotto draw for him. Stephen then selects the numbers for one ticket and buy an additional 3 Quick Picks, as he previously set that he is not interested in the Lotto Plus, he is not prompted to add that to his ticket. After that Stephen clicks on Buy Tickets which asks him for a fingerprint on the sensor, and once he presses the button, the 4 tickets are displayed in the screen with some quick facts of what he could do with that money (for example: buy a bottle of the most expensive Champagne for every citizen of Kilkenny).

At night, after the draw, Stephen receives a notification on his phone saying he won a prize, he then clicks on the notification and a drumroll ensues, displaying his winnings of 8 Euro. Stephen is happy he won something and decides to play again for the next Lotto draw.

Scenario 2. Stephen users the Lotto app to set up his notifications

Stephen dreams big, he has in his mind that only large winnings are worth going for. He receives notifications from the Irish National Lottery but he is not interested in only 5 million euro. Stephen enters the app and clicks on Settings. In Settings he finds a section called Notifications, he then is presented with a screen to set up his notifications, he decides that he wants to be notified when the Lotto reaches more than 10 million and that he wants to be notified on the day of the draw via the app and via email, on the Lotto he only wants to be notified if the winning prize is above 10 million. Stephen disables the notifications for all other games like Monday Million and scratch cards and disables any other marketing communication from the Irish National Lottery. He saves these settings. The week after, Stephen receives a notification on the day of the draw stating that the Lotto reached 12 million Euro. Stephen then takes his phone out and buy 4 tickets for the Lotto.

And these are 2 storyboards created for Andrew Kelly:

 

[1] Brown, D. (2016, November 11). How to Build a Problem Statement. Retrieved from https://medium.com/eightshapes-llc/how-to-build-a-problem-statement-d1f21713720b

[2] Cooper, A. (2014). About face: the essentials of interaction design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.