Define

User Personas

Personas are hypothetical users that are crafted based off of our user research, which we had categorized based on similar or different responses to our interview questions.

We created two personas, Michael and Anna, to help us gain a better understanding of our target user group. We discussed and specifically highlighted possible goals, desires, and pain points that these users want to address in our design. It’s also important to note that our detailed user findings were crucial to this process, as we wanted our personas to reflect various real-world circumstances.

Moving forward, much of our design and work was influenced by Michael and Anna, as we wanted our product to address their needs as potential users. In the next step, we dive further into Michael’s emotional and situational timeline through a detailed journey map.

Journey Map

The user journey map reflects the current user experience without the product through their actions and emotions going through a scenario or certain situation. The user could be experience various circumstances throughout their journey, and we highlighted important points all throughout the scenario, including emotional lows and highs.

Since a detailed journey map gives us more insight on our users’ interactions, we expanded on one of our personas, Michael, to fully understand his story. Additionally, this would assist our design process as well as addressing how we should cater our design to address various points in his journey.

Moving forward into more design ideation, our journey map served as a foundational point for understanding our users on a deeper level.

Michael’s experience in using traditional online video calls is represented in the journey map below. We utilized the scenario written in Michael’s person to go through different actions and emotions that are expressed before, during, and after Michael is in a call with his child.

Since we found that Michael has various thoughts than can be categorized into different emotions, we wanted to highlight the difference between general positive and negative emotions throughout this journey map, as both have a significant impact on the user’s opinion on current long distance communication tools.

Each action and thought corresponds with a certain letter in its given section. Each number and letter combination are then mapped on the emotional intensity graph.

The journey map as a whole allows us to understand the feelings of our users and how their actions can affect their overall experience. Through our design, we wanted to address how to better account for the more negatively associated experiences but also call attention to the positive portions that can be emphasized in our design.