1. 1
The Power of Ad-Hoc Personas:
Truly practical ways to get confused execs
on the same page.
Tamara Adlin
For UIE Virtual Seminars
February 2010
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

2. 2
About Me
• Author, Speaker & Consultant
• Corporate Underpants Blogger
• Co-Founder, Fell Swoop
• Consultant, adlin, inc.
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

3. 3
Like it or not, you already have
personas.
When developing rich experiences across multiple
channels with a large team, few people have the
same users in mind when making decisions.
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

4. 4
Categorization Exercise (I want / I
need)
This is freakin’ hard.
Enterprise Small-Medium Mom-and-Pop
Businesses
I need to
I want to I need to
I need ROI- protect the I have to I need I need to
know how know how to
and that’s all existing manage this custom know you are
support staff this
I care about infra- all alone! reports. reliable
works. internally.
structure.
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Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

5. 5
Example of Persona Prioritization
• Give every exec 100 points (or
200)
• Give out points according to
business value of each
persona
- “If we don’t make _________
ridiculously happy, we’ve
failed.”
• No two personas can get the
same score, unless it’s zero.
- They will always forget this
rule.
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

6. 6
Ellen’s Goals & How We’ll Answer
Ellen Evans Questions
PRIORITY: 2 / CATEGORY: INTERESTED Yes, we list all the best jobs in
I want to build my career— the industry, but that’s not all
“I need tools and information make more money, get more we have for you.
that can help me work even responsibility, and build a We have more than one event a
reputation in this industry.
faster and smarter…I have no year, and here’s when they are,
time or tolerance for anything I want to find good shortcuts what they cover, etc.
that bogs me down!” along the way so I can work We have some prepared ideas
smarter. for you to justify the cost of
Description I want to build my contacts. your membership to your boss.
Ellen is an event planner, and she’s proud of her career. She started This biz is all about who you
out as an executive assistant to the VP of Sales at Acme, Inc. She
know. “Oh, By The Way...”
kind of ‘fell in’ to being an event planner; when she was an
executive assistant, she had to organize meetings for the board and I want to stay up to date, but I Yes, we have it all…but we’re
other small gatherings. Her boss then asked her to put together an thinking about you and your
don’t want to become a
incentive trip for the sales people, and she found out that she was
really good at pulling off a big event like that…and she liked it! She scholar. There’s only so much needs. Our job is to keep you
started learning about event planning as a career and now is time in the day—who has time up to date without having to
‘officially’ an event planner at Acme. These days, she finds herself for big reports? dedicate your life to it. We do
looking at brochures for Cancun, the Bahamas, and Hawaii, and on the hard stuff—the sorting, the
the phone wheeling and dealing to get a great deal on a block of
100 rooms, massive numbers of flights, and meals for a whole
Ellen’s Questions, in summarizing, and the
bunch of picky people. It’s really fun. Her Own Terms prioritizing—so you don’t have
to.
Ellen has been a member MPI for 2 years. She heard about the What other jobs are out there
organization when she started learning about event planning and for me?
she convinced her then boss to pay the membership fee for her.
Ellen is excited to grow her career now that she’s confident in her What’s the next event?
abilities and interest in event planning. In fact, it might just be time
to see what other jobs are out there. She bets she could leverage How can I convince my boss to
her new skills to make more money than she does now (and to re-up my membership?
move to a company where people don’t still think of her as an
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

7. 7
The Persona-Weighted Feature Matrix:
Pet features fall to the bottom like
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

8. 8
Taking the Matrix one step farther:
Creating effective communication with your
• You have the feature
priorities...
Work on these Work on these
features LATER features NOW
HIGH
• which are based on persona Benefit to
Personas
priorities...
• which are based on business LOW HIGH
and brand goals... Technical
Feasibility
Technical
Feasibility
• which were approved by the
execs...
LOW
Benefit to
Personas
Ignore these features, Work on these
possibly forever. features later, MAYBE
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

9. 9
Personas are Characters;
Use Design Maps to Create the Stories
Design Map: Ellen signs up for MPI for the first time
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Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.

10. 10
Join us!
The Power of Ad-Hoc Personas
Virtual Seminar
For more info, and to sign up:
www.UIE.com
Copyright 2010, Tamara Adlin. All rights reserved.