Rachel Hungerford

rhunger@uw.edu | contact | resume

Personas: Facebook



Click the above images to view the gallery
SUMMARY

For this project, my team and I created personas for Facebook as part of the class LIS 519: Personas. We used the method "Quantative Validation" as described by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar in their book The User is Always Right. In this method, qualitative data is first gathered and then analyzed to understand the "why" of user behavior. Quantitative data is then used to "validate" the assumptions from the qualitative data by testing hypotheses on a larger and statistical sound number of participants.

MY ROLE

User Researcher: conducted eight interviews and assisted in writing the survey. I created two out of the five persona profiles.

PROCESS
  • Reviewed previously conducted research about Facebook users and user data
  • Recruited particpants with a wide range of internet usage, Facebook usage, age (ranged 14-57), and gender
  • Interviewed 25 people over the phone and in person
  • Compiled a list of "top takeaways" for each participant
  • Conducted a 50 question survey
    • 104 respondents; 96 with Facebook accounts
  • Analyzed the survey responses with Excel
  • Created an affinity diagram to group personas into segments
RESULT

This project went very well and was quite enjoyable. I received probably the nicest feedback I've ever had from my professor,"Overall, the Persona Portfolio in a word was—excellent. Well, okay, in another word? Incredible. The research approach was tremendously detailed, rigorous, and well suited for your persona objectives... Your research strategy was textbook (if a persona guide did exist ;-)), well planned and well executed."

Group Members: Saul Aguilar, Melody Clark

Download the persona profiles

All profile images used as part of the Creative Commons Attribution license. Attributions as follows:

"Jillian" - Photo by: cybershaman / CC BY 2.0
"Deepti" - Photos by: 14132971@N05 / CC BY 2.0
"Nelson" - Photo by: roberto8080 / CC BY 2.0
"Susan" - Photo by: bdwaydiva1 / CC BY 2.0
"Robert"- Photo by: carbonnyc / CC BY 2.0