Personas

✺ Introduction

This project focused on picking a random object and studying it through a UI/UX lens. My interface of choice was a fire extiguisher. I was drawn to this interface because of the life saving protection that it offers. The interface is a crucial part of being able to protect oneself and therefore has to be clearly understood not only quickly, but also while its user is in distress. I chose the fire extinguisher housed in my apartment building and chose my three roomates as potential users.

➲ Interviews

Below is the list of questions I chose to ask the users:

➊ What qualities do you think are most important for a fire extinguisher?
➋ Look at this fire extinguisher. Have you ever used a fire extinguisher before?
➌ If they haven't used a fire extinguisher before: How intuitive do you think this design is?
➍ If they have: Does the design of this extinguisher seem familiar/reassuring?
➎ Now look at the instruction manual, how useful do you think this is? How useful do you think an instruction manual is in the context of when a fire extinguisher is usually needed?
➏ When grabbing the extinguisher, instinctually, what do you do first?
➐ Circling back to the qualities you thought were most important, how do you think this specific device/interface compared?
➑ What might you do to improve the interface of the fire extinguisher?
➒ Did you notice the PSI gage? If so/if not why is that?

☍ Empathy Maps

Below I have constructed two fictional personas by creating four-quadrant empathy maps, describing what users think, feel, say, and do for an archetypal character that represents part of the spectrum of users I observed. Read the diagram below to learn about Careless Carl and Anxious Annie.

☻ Storyboard

The final step in my project was to create a storyboard representing one of the personas I created, I chose Careless Carl. The storyboard depicts Carl using a fire extinguisher with a new and improved interface. The new interface gives the fire extinguisher an interactive PSI gage, which I concluded would be useful based on the data I collected.