introduction
in CoinbitAt Bitcoin, we are dedicated to improving the UX so more people can benefit from it. As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and community engagement, we recently Product Roadmap It has been released. This time, Bitcoin Summer Project: Bitcoin Personas.
The Pitfalls of Persona
Coinbits is a family-owned Bitcoin-only exchange. We are a small startup with a big vision to build the first #HybridBanking platform that seamlessly combines Bitcoin & fiat financial services.
Our team is primarily made up of engineers, but we also have a few members with product and design backgrounds. We recently decided to refresh our user personas to strengthen the foundation for ongoing product-market fit.
Persona Personas are fictional depictions of target users that development teams use to focus on the human needs of the people they’re developing products for. While personas have been a mainstay of UX and innovation teams for decades, in recent years they’ve gained a reputation for being a high investment project with questionable ROI. This is primarily because personas tend to be underused by the audiences they were created for (internal engineers, designers, and executives).
Often, beautifully designed personas are created by UX teams and presented in meetings. It will be quickly forgotten. And even if they don’t, are they really providing product insights or Fictional, fluffy, final?
If a persona fails, it may be due to one or more of the following reasons:
- They try to be broad and inclusive rather than specific and exclusive.
- They aren’t telling a character-driven story and the characters don’t feel like real people.
- They obsess over the extra details.
- The number is so large that it becomes difficult to take them into account during the product development process.
A better approach
We believe the best way to approach personas is to think of them as summaries of user research that the entire development team participated in. In other words, engineers, executives, and designers should be physically present for a significant portion of the user interviews. If the UX team goes out to do research and comes back with a deliverable, the rest of the team misses out on an opportunity to make a direct, empathetic connection with the actual users who use the company’s product.
Instead, think of the work product as the interview itself, and the persona as more of a documentation of that work product.
Ideally, to run a persona project, the UX owner acts as a servant leader for the qualitative research project. The UX owner guides the conversation between engineers and users, and perpetuates the work with deliverables that are rich in detail and easy to reference later. In this way, the personas serve the purpose of preserving the research insights for as long as possible.
methodology
Our products are currently only available to customers located in the United States; therefore, findings should be interpreted as specific to the United States. User interviews were conducted to gather qualitative data during video chat sessions. Video allowed us to see participants’ faces, body language, clothing, and physical environment.
We encouraged conversation by asking open-ended questions that encouraged participants to talk about their personal lives. When the conversation strayed too far into Bitcoin, we brought it back to Bitcoin, but also allowed for open conversation about sound currencies, economics, work, spirituality, values, etc.
We interviewed each of the 22 users for an hour, with 2-4 people from our side present and free to contribute to the conversation.
Below are some example question prompts I used to get the conversation going.
- How did you hear about us? When did you join?
- Why buy Bitcoin? How do you use it? What have you used it for?
- What are your financial goals five, ten, twenty years down the line?
- What do you think the future holds for Bitcoin? How will it evolve and impact the world?
- How do you get Bitcoin? What apps do you use to buy and manage your Bitcoin?
- Are there other Bitcoin users in your circle of friends? Who are they? What are the main topics you use to introduce Bitcoin? What resources do you use and why?
- If there was a magic tool that would make Bitcoin better, more useful and easier, what would it do?
- What can we do?
Persona
Four personas were created to represent different demographics of users.
Each persona includes the following elements:
- AI-generated Medium shot.
- Demographics and personality traits
- Story: Introduction, motivation, goal, and Work to be done
- Favorite brands: Short-form content, long-form content, automotive, finance, clothing, lifestyle.
The guidelines we followed were:
- Rather than drawing generalizations from multiple user interviews, we combine details from multiple user interviews.
- Our content will be authentic and based on real encounters with our users. We don’t impose artificial diversity requirements, nor do we make an effort to find a particular type of user that we think we want or should be.
- Tell a story that your users will remember and like. We want to interact with these (fictional) people; we should think they’re at least reasonably cool. If your personas aren’t likable, how hard are you going to work to build a product for them?
- Keep the number of personas small so they are easy to remember.
- Stick to the MVP: As UX practitioners, we love design and storytelling, so it’s easy to indulge in over-designed deliverables. Instead, deliver a thorough persona document and then build the software.
The finished product can be downloaded below. Bitcoin Design Foundation Website.
What’s next?
Bitcoin-focused people are on the brink of a truly user-friendly experience. New Apple Pay features Tap to cash is a mainstream example of UX improvement for digital payments. This indicates that we may be entering a period of breakthroughs in payments UX. Bitcoin certainly plays a role here. As Bitcoin-focused UX practitioners, we are in a great position to make an impact. We would be thrilled if sharing this work inspires others to contribute to important projects that make Bitcoin more user-friendly.
Want to get involved? Check out the Coinbits app. We take great pride in the fact that we put a lot of time and effort into our product design. We’d love to hear your thoughts! If this is something you’re interested in, consider joining the community. Bitcoin Design Foundation.
These research results CC BY-NC 4.0 Through licensing, we hope to contribute in some small way to making Bitcoin more user-friendly.
The project also includes Tiffany Lee, Rachoan Rejeb, David Waugh.
This is a guest post by Dave Birnbaum. The opinions expressed here are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
