User Personas Conclusion

As Matti earlier explained, our group decided at this point to gather information from the other teams in the course. This way we thought that we could see the big picture while not spending too much time on working on something that has already been done. Since I had done the User Personas for my team earlier it was quite clear that I would gather information about that again.

Yes and... As a student in the tourism industry I can't help to go back to what inspires me. Though this post should be about what the other teams have found I feel the need to share Karelias example of user personas. (more info on: http://sirkkalantehdas.karelia.fi/files/User_personas.pdf). I truly believe that the tourism industry is growing every second and as every Finnish person knows, Russians are one of our main tourism groups. They spend a lot of money, and there are lots of them. Wouldent it be lovely if we could find a pullfactor that would make all the Russian tourists shop in just one store? This would truly make their sales shoot through the roof. Anyway, enough about that.

Here is my personal conclusion of the information from the User Personas tools I found from the other teams (I've shortly gathered positive and negative feedback from customers that I didn't include in my earlier User Personas post):

• The service quality is not very good. It seems that the store has a lot of workers, but few people that actually work.
• Quality and price go hand in hand. A big pull factor to the store is their quality and expensive but good brands.
• It is comfortable to shop in the store if you need a lot of different products. Example: Makeup, clothes for both men and women and electronics
• The cashiers are hard to find and as a customer you can have a hard time finding someone that can help you out.
• The store is a great place if you are out looking for gifts
• For someone with moving dissabilities the store is not planned out so well. It is also quite narrow in the store.
• Younger customers often use their smartphone to look up information.

Last but not least, if you like me can't get enough of tools and design methods, read 200 Ways to Apply Design Thinking by Robert Curedale.
Not only is the book brilliantly designed (the author himself described the book as being a "cookbook", but it also includes new and innovative ideas for design thinking. The book is really easy to read and compared to many other books I've read I can actually see myself using one of the methods mentioned in the book. Curedale has also written a book called 50 brainstorming Methods. Unfortionatelly I coulden´t find a copy of that book but I bet it's useful aswell. They are both published in 2012, and though this subject changes quite quickly I bet they are still up to date.
Ps. Apparently that same year the book 101 Design Methods was published. (What a year for design methods!).

 

Cheers!
Janina