Interaction13 presentation video on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/63264721 Personas aren’t the only kid on the block when it comes to using archetypes to understand how people think and feel. The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) is also based on archetypes, and is the most widely used personality assessment in use today. The MBTI defines sixteen distinct personality types based on four dimensions, describing a range of ways that people relate to and engage with the world. Based on the work of Carl Jung, the MBTI has been subjected to decades of rigorous academic study and practical evaluation. The Meyers-Briggs compliments the context and insights that come from primary research, and is a powerful lens through which interaction designers may more clearly understand users’ needs, motivations, and experiences. This talk will provide an overview of the Myers-Briggs, highlight research and thought leadership relating personality types to technology usage, examine controversies and limitations of the MBTI and share ways to use personality types to support and communicate design, including a brief case study.
TRANSCRIPT
Personas Made Personal Josh Cothran | Georgia Tech Research Institute | @joshcothran
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Good morning, I’m Josh Cothran. I’m an IxDA Local Leader and a UX Designer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. I’m also an INTJ – also known as The Mastermind or The Scientist – and from informal conversations with my UX friends, I suspect that I’m in pretty good company here today.
@joshcothran
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Last summer I was working on a research project on health IT adoption by the medical profession. We’d conducted a lit review, an online survey, and interviewed over 40 people, and were beginning to synthesize those findings into personas and journey maps. So here I am with personas on the brain when a close friend of mine –more honestly, my girlfriend – decides that it’s time for of a career transition.
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And as we were trying to work out what her next adventure should be, I dusted off a career guidebook called Do What You Are that I’d once used myself for a professional development course. Do What You Are is organized around the sixteen personality types of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, which in turn is based on Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and personality. Each chapter opens with profiles of three individuals sharing the same personality type, including quotes, their backstories, goals, motivations, concerns, and what works for them in a career.
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Sound familiar? Backstory? Goals? Motivations? Concerns? What works in an experience? These are exactly the types of attributes that we use when we create personas to understand our users and support the design process. So what’s going on here? Have the authors of Do What You Are been sneaking into our offices and tearing pages out of the UX playbook? Occam’s Razor suggests simpler explanation.
Isabel Briggs Myers Alan Cooper Carl Jung
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You see, just as the Myers-Briggs draws on the work of Carl Jung, the personas that we UXers use –popularized by Alan Cooper back in the 1990s – are also based on archetypes. The flash of recognition that I experienced was one of a UX Designer reunited with his cousin the Personality Psychologist and fully appreciating the family resemblance for the first time. I was intrigued, and it’s my exploration of that relationship that brings me here today. So, what do you say we shake up the family tree a bit and spend a few minutes looking at how we might apply the Myers-Briggs to the world of UX and Interaction Design?
Energy
Information
Decisions
Organization
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To do that, let’s start with a quick review of what the Myers-Briggs is and how it works. As I mentioned before, there are sixteen personality types in total, but that number isn’t arbitrary. There are four dimensions, and for each of those dimensions, any given person tends to lean one way or another, like a seesaw. When you add up all the different ways those four seesaws could lean – two times two times two times two – that’s where you get your sixteen. Those four dimensions – where we draw our energy, how we process information, how we make decisions, and how we organize the world around us – are really what it’s all about. Let’s break it down.
Introversion Extroversion
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Energy
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The first dimension is about where we draw our energy. On one end you have your Extroverts, who draw energy from interacting with others. The extroverts here might not be getting enough sleep, but they’re all fired up from all the partying and connecting we’ve been doing. On the other end you have your Introverts, who draw their energy from their inner world. Now, being an Introvert doesn’t mean that you’re not confident or don’t have social skills, but it does mean that after an evening of socializing or a week-long conference, Introverts like myself are going to need some quiet time to recharge and decompress. So that’s your first dimension: energy.
iNtuition Sensing
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Information
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Next up is how we process information. People on the Sensing end see the world as it is, concentrating on the information they can take in through their senses – “just the facts, ma’am.” On the other end, Intuitives see the world as it could be, reading between the lines and looking for meaning in everything. You frequently find Intuitives in creative fields, and I’d say the odds are pretty good that even though Sensors outnumber Intuitives three-to-one in the general population, a strong majority of the folks here at Interaction fall on the intuition end of the information processing continuum. So, one: energy. Two: information.
Thinking Feeling
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Decisions
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Third is how we make decisions. This one’s pretty straightforward: Thinking versus Feeling, head versus heart, rational versus emotional, Data versus Troi.
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Perceiving Judging Organization
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Ok, last one: the fourth dimension. This one can be a little tricky to wrap your head around, but basically it comes down to organizational style: not just our stuff, but also information, the world around us, and even how we relate to time. Judging is the decisive end of the spectrum: organized, black and white, clear-cut. On the other end you have perceiving: spontaneous, shades of grey, open-ended.
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Introverted
iNtuitive
Thinking
Perceiving
Extroverted
Sensing
Feeling
Judging
Energy
Information
Decisions
Organization
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Four dimensions: Energy. Information. Decisions. Organization.
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It’s interesting to me that there should be four. Bill Buxton recently came and spoke in Atlanta and was talking about how important it is to get different points of view, different data points. To paraphrase, he said “if I get one I have a point. Two and I have a line. Three defines a plane. But four or more… then it starts to take shape.” And that(!), I think, is where personality enters the picture when it comes to personas and understanding our users. Now there are a lot of good reasons to create personas that don’t have much to do with personality at all – capturing requirements, business objectives, market segments. And personas should do those things. If that’s all they do, then you have a profile, and those are useful too.
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But one of the things that I’ve always loved about personas is the way they transform customers and users into people. Humans. Personas should feel real, and real people are individuals with specific personalities. Of course, there might be a variety of personality types that might be appropriate for the role or segment that your persona is representing, and that’s cool; think of the persona as their delegate. But there’s a reason multiple personalities is a disorder, so keep that in mind.
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To give you an idea of what this looks like in practice, let me introduce you to the personas that came out of the health IT project I mentioned earlier, the one that got me started on this whole idea in the first place. Now I’m very happy with how these personas came out, but on the surface you wouldn’t guess that there’s anything particularly special about them. They’re segmented by role, the sections are pretty standard, and none of the dimensions line up with the dimensions of the Meyers-Briggs that we just went over.
ENTJ: The Executive ESTJ: The Guardian
ISFJ: The Nurturer ESFJ: The Caregiver
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But there’s more here than meets the eye. Under the hood, Strategic Steve is an ENTJ, The Executive; Hands-on Henry is an ESTJ, The Guardian; Devoted Diane is an ISFJ, The Nurturer; and Efficient Eric is an ESFJ, The Caregiver Almost immediately – and I didn’t plan or expect this – you start to see some really interesting things in terms of similarities and differences. Both of our CIOs are Extroverted, Thinking, and Judging, differing only on the Information Processing dimension. Both of our physicians are Sensing, Feeling, and Judging, differing only on the Energy dimension. And the common denominator for all of them is Judging – decisive, structured, and clear-cut. Which sounds about right for four people who frequently have to make decisions that can be a matter of life and death.
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Looking at the personas and their personality types individually is where it gets really fun. If you’ve ever taken the Myers-Briggs and remember the first time you ever read the profile for your type, you may have had experience like someone had stolen your diary and had written a book report. Well, when the same thing happened to me for the participants we interviewed in our research, that’s when I felt like a light bulb had gone off. Themes that we’d already started to identify were called out, and others that we hadn’t yet found the words to express came into focus. Our personas had come to life.
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Which is great, but if you want to do this, how are you supposed to match up personas to personality types? Enough strategy, let’s get tactical. Start out just like you normally would: work out who’s who; rough them in until you start to get a feel for who they are, but still kind of an acquaintance. Here’s the other place where personality types are really useful: at that point, if your persona’s character is well developed enough, you should be able nail down at least two of the dimensions based on your research or what aspects of the persona you’re looking to emphasize. Otherwise, keep at it.
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Finally comes the Cinderella test. Does the shoe fit? Sometimes you move on to the next one until you find something comfortable. Sometimes nothing really stands out, which may be an indication that your persona is trying to represent too many users, or maybe just that this technique isn’t the right fit for your project. And sometimes you’ll find a magic slipper and suddenly your persona will feel like they’re in Technicolor.
Enjoy responsibly • It’s not magic • Like personas, the MBTI
is a descriptive instrument
• Correlation ≠ Causation • Circumstances
influence preferences • Type of design problem
impacts relevance of MBTI dimensions
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The MBTI compliments and augments, it doesn’t replace
The MBTI does not • Measure aptitude • Measure normalcy • Predict performance • Predict job satisfaction • Predict whom a person
will like or not like • Capture context –
that’s why we do research!
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The MBTI compliments and augments, it doesn’t replace
Josh Cothran | Georgia Tech Research Institute | @joshcothran
Thanks.
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Thanks.
Image Credits
#ixd13 | @joshcothran
Flickr User: -mrsraggle- | Creative Commons: Attribution, No Derivative Works http://www.flickr.com/photos/raggle/3163752268
Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger | Do What You Are http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316167266/
Josh Cothran | Creative Commons: Attribution
Georgia Department of Community Health (by Josh Cothran, GTRI) | used with permission
Public domain
Public domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AlanCooper.jpg
