POV App Statements

In my previous post about problem statements, I mentioned that creating a problem statement can be helpful in the ideation phase of Design Thinking. The project that I worked on for this assignment focused on point of view (POV) statements from three different apps.

POV statements are a bit different from the problem statements I made for Undercover Boss. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, a POV statement is “a meaningful and actionable problem statement”. The statement usually will help you with the design work after creating statements to go off of. Focusing on the statement you make from the user perspective will help the user in the end because their needs will be the driving force of creating something useful for them.

In the project I made for this assignment I focused on three apps from the Apple app store. The three apps that I used was Tinder, Uber, and Snapchat to make problem statements. You may be wondering how I came up with the problem statements. Well, here is what I did. To get the problem statements I went to the App store and looked into the review section of each app. I collected three positive comments, three negative comments, and 3 constructive comments from the users who were using each app.

Looking at both the negative comments and the constructive comments from the users I came up with statements from the users that I thought needed attention. As I was looking at the comments many of the users of each app stated different needs from the Apps. The users also stated ways in which the app developers can change things to better help them or other users.

Going into reviews and comments from customers can be a very beneficial and helpful way to change the UI or design of the product you are giving to customers. Making a point of view statement from the users perspective by looking at the reviews is similar to interviewing users about products and services.

HERE is a link to the PDF I made for the three apps I made POV statements about. In the PDF I placed the rating next to each app and a description of what the app is about according to the App store. Each of the apps is followed by three different categories of positive, negative, and constructive comments from the users. I took screenshots of these comments and placed them in the PDF so you can read what the users are saying about the app they use. Take a look HERE at the PDF.

Designing these problem statements made me understand much deeper into how to organize a problem statement from a users’ perspective. Before completing this assignment, I learned about problem statements but it was tough for me to understand coming up with a statement from a user perspective. By creating multiple POV statements from the three apps I used I managed to get great practice on making POV statements which will help me later in the field of UX Design.

Problem Statements

Creating a problem statement for a client may be very helpful for the ideation phase of Design Thinking. The problem statement can be a very difficult part of the process. Bringing up a problem statement will give you more clarity and focus on what you are designing according to the Interaction Design Foundation. The problem statement should be human-centered, broad enough, and narrow enough. 

For my problem statements, I made examples from the show I watched on Undercover Boss. I made five problem statements with the example sentence “…is a challenge for…because…”. I tried to give the best five statements I pulled from observations and from my empathy map to come up with from this episode on Mary Brown’s Chicken. Here are the five statements bulleted below. 

1.    Getting customers is a challenge for John’s store because the locals don’t know what the restaurant is and there is not enough signage in the area. 

2.    Getting chicken is a challenge for Karen’s store because the supplier was running late with the supply of chicken. 

3.    Keeping the store open late and getting customers to come into the store later is a challenge for Jeff’s store because they have had multiple robberies. 

4.   Taking customers’ orders and giving them the right pieces of chicken is a challenge for CEO Greg because he has never done it before.

5.   Cooking is a challenge for Joyce because the machine doesn’t beep when the food is done in the fryer. 

In the first problem statement undercover boss, Greg, visited John’s store to see how the store was doing. It wasn’t doing great at all due to the low customer volume. Both Greg and John talked about the issue and concluded that it may be because of the lack of signage and advertisement and people in the area not knowing what the restaurant is. 

The second problem that happened in the store was Karen’s store and the supplier not getting to the shop on time to make the chicken. This is a big problem because she had to go shopping for chicken before the store opened. Though this happened once Greg doesn’t want this to be repeated in the future. 

My third problem statement was a big issue for franchisee Jeff. Due to multiple robberies, which he explains to Greg, the store owner delivers himself and doesn’t keep the store open late due to a large number of robberies that have taken place in his store. 

In the next problem statement, I observed CEO Greg trying to take customers money and give them the right piece of chicken. He struggled with doing the tasks that he was given and it didn’t come easy to him. 

The last problem statement was another major problem I found for Joyce in her store. Her deep fryer wasn’t working as she wanted it to and she had to always watch the food when it was done which caused a big problem. She explained this to Greg but she always had a smile on her face when doing so. 

With these five problem statements, solutions can come from them. Some of the solutions got resolved by the CEO at the end of the episode. For example, Greg gave Joyce a new fryer, Jeff got a new store location in a safer environment, and Greg was going to personally help John get more customers to his store location.

Creating Personas

Personas can be very helpful for companies to look at when trying to target a cluster of audiences. But, what is a persona you might ask? A persona is a representation of a type of customer or a cluster of customers. Creating a persona can take a while because it involves knowing the customer and understanding who they are. This can relate to the empathy module that I have written about in my last blog post. When you are working with others on a team and you have different users for a company you want to have personas that everyone on the team knows about and can point out. This shows that you are thinking about the users of a particular company. It also shows that you know the company users well enough.

Making a persona for the users of a brand or company is not a waste of time according to Beaker & Flint. This site gives a great persona template and describes what each section in the template means. Though every persona doesn’t have to be the same most personas have some of the same content in it to represent the user. 

Each persona has an image that represents the user in the persona. The image you want to represent for the user is an image that feels very real and not the typical “woman with a briefcase” according to Beaker & Flint. The persona picture is one of the most important pieces of the persona so you should think deep enough on what type of picture and what person to represent the user. 

Making a persona can be a bit tricky. One of the best ways of making a persona is by interviewing actual people that you are making the persona for. These interviewees will give you plenty of information on who they are and what they think of the company and or product. It will be much easier to fill in some of the sections in the persona.

There are a few examples of personas I have made following the Beaker & Flint model. The company I have used was Walmart and one of the personas represents myself and another of a hypothetical user named Mary. 

Link to PDF’s at bottom of page.

Taking a look into my persona, I am an avid Walmart shopper. Though I made the persona of myself, Walmart’s UX team can use my persona as one of the many personas they may already have. We are going to call my persona “Brianna’s Persona” so I do not confuse you with the other persona I made during this project. The role that Brianna has at Walmart is a young adult learning to budget her money while shopping. The role of the user in the persona should be unique and descriptive for others to read. This is what sets the user apart from other users like Mary. 

Mary is another persona I made for Walmart who uses the online grocery app and delivery service from Walmart. Because I work at Walmart and see my customers every day it was easier to make a persona for the hypothetical user that uses this Walmart service. Mary is a mother with three children and she wants to find a faster way of shopping for groceries. Many users of this service have stressed to me how they don’t have time to shop due to prior activities with kids and or their busy work life. Most of the time I see the kids with the parents in the car. Many of the users tell me how great the service is and how they do not have to shop themselves but have personal shoppers do it for them. What the user tells me can be used as quotes in the persona that will help give insight into how they feel about the service. We will be using Mary’s persona for the rest of the time. 

Another important section of the persona is the demographics of the user. In the demographic section, some things can be left out if it doesn’t benefit the persona. Because Mary does want a faster way to shop it is important to know that she has three kids, works as an accountant, married and so on. 

As we go further into the persona her goals and behaviors are recorded to better understand the user. This section answers the question “what does Mary want to achieve from this service”. Mary’s journey or behavior is going to be a part of the persona as to what she is doing currently. Mary could have been shopping with her kids and getting frustrated or shopping after work and not getting home an hour or two later just from shopping. 

Understanding what motivates users like Mary is important to place in the persona. What is motivating Mary to use the Walmart service is how fast it is for her to pick up her groceries and spending more time with her three children which she wanted to do. 

One of the last sections of the Beaker & Flint persona that is helpful to understand about the user is the influencers and environment in which they are using the platform. Mary is influenced by many people in her life to use the Walmart service including her family and friends who recommended it to her, Walmart Ads she has seen recently that interested her, and her own three children who she wants to spend more time with after work. As for the environment, a company like Walmart will want to know how Mary is using the service. Mary uses many different devices to use the service like her phone, laptop, and iPad. 

There is a lot of information that can be given by the user to place in the persona. Mary represents a cluster of users who are very similar to her. Walmart is a company that offers to a wide demographic of people and backgrounds. Every persona is useful. I challenge you to make one yourself for a company or if you own a company try and make a persona for your users! 

Here is a link to the persona PDF’s I have made. Click HERE

What is an Empathy Map?

Empathy according to Google’s dictionary is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. Many people can empathize with others when it comes to sensitive topics and other information people share with them. User Experience Design uses empathy as one of its first steps in the process of Design Thinking. Without empathy, you simply can’t start working with clients and think that you will have a very successful outcome. Or at least it will be a challenge to be successful. In the empathy stage of Design Thinking, the most important thing you must do is listen to the person who is talking and understand what they are saying. In my previous post in this class, I talked about the Undercover Boss, Greg, who questioned and listened to a lot of the employees in his stores. He was showing his empathetic side to the people who worked for his company. In the last post, I created empathy maps on Greg and one of his employees.

So, what exactly is an empathy map? An empathy map according to Solutions IQ is a “tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers” (Bland). Many people relate an empathy map to a persona which both can represent a group of users of a certain company. The example photo above is an empathy map I have made a while back with myself in the middle of the map. Instead of my photo being in the center of the map imagine a photo of yourself. Imagine a product like the new iPhone 11 and an interviewer was watching you figure out the phone and looking at the new features. The interviewer will fill in this empathy map about what they are seeing you do in each of the sections of the empathy map. In my empathy map above I am missing two more sections which is the “pain” and “gain” section of the empathy map. Below is an example of what another empathy map looks like.

The “interviewer” which is the UX Designer will fill in the information they receive from you while toggling with the iPhone. The UX Designer will get to know how you think and feel about the product, what they see you do with the product, how you are using the product, what you say about it, and what they hear you happen to say about it. There are also the other two bottom sections of the map which are the pain and gain section of the map. The pain section of the map describes what troubles you may face with the product. The gain section is what the user will most likely gain from the product which is more of a positive outlook about the product. Will it make their life easier and so on. 

Empathy maps can help the UX Designer better immerse themselves in the world of the user to better understand what that person is going through and how they feel. Using this map will better help both user and UX Designer because the UX Designer will get a better sense of the world the user is living in and help create better outcomes for the user in the end. This ability to understand others and different people will result in better solutions for a user in the end.

Undercover Boss Empathy Map

Most employees can only hope that the CEO or big boss can see how the working conditions are in their location of store or product. Undercover Boss is a show that has been around for years on television showing the CEO of big companies disguising themselves as regular people so they don’t blow their cover. 

In the episode that I watched for an assignment the CEO of Mary Brown’s Chicken and Taters, Greg Roberts, went undercover as a regular employee with the company. He wanted to better his company by getting to know his employees and understanding what working for the company meant to them and hoping to make changes to it. While being undercover he also discovered many important things along the way in which he addressed to his company and to the people he specifically worked with. 

Though I have learned about empathy maps in a previous course completing my exercise on the two empathy maps I created helps me practice with this concept. According to Nielsen Norman Group, empathy maps are used to “understand and prioritize user needs”. Empathy maps are also to visualize what we happen to know about a type of person or user. 

While viewing the episode on Greg and his company I simply wrote in each of the empathy sections labeled think and feel, hear, see, say and do, pain and gain. When Roberts was getting to know his employees, he was simply empathizing with them. He did this by asking questions and engaging in their life stories. As for myself, I was writing down about Greg on his empathy journey. 

There were differences when it came to both the boss and the employees of the company. Greg was more listening and understanding his employees’ issues and stories while the employees themselves were discussing how they felt at the job and how their life was with the job. Though some of the workers have some dilemmas with their jobs like the broken fryer in Joyce’s store she is still happy and making do with what she has. But, Greg noticed that it was something that needed to be fixed for Joyce to fully run the business much happier. He decided to give her a brand-new fryer for the kitchen.

There was a similarity though between the employees and the boss which was that they all rarely spent time with their families and loved ones. I believe that this idea made Greg empathize more with a lot of his employees because they had to manage family life and a job that was demanding. Towards the end of the episode Greg sat down with the many employees he got a chance to work with. To my surprise, he rewarded them all with something that they needed to gain in the company. Most of his employees that he talked to expressed not seeing family and such which he greatly awarded some people with vacations, life-changing experiences, new homes, and helped a store owner personally run his business better. Greg empathized a lot with his employees which they were very thankful for. 

Creating empathy maps made me better understand making one for a future client. Click HERE to see the PDF of my Empathy Maps of Greg and his employee Joyce.