Speech Summaries

Chris Colborn Vice President, Interaction Design R/GA

Design Track: The ROI Of Design Personas Panel

Moderator: Paul Sonderegger, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Chris Colborn, Vice President, Interaction Design, R/GA

Michael D. Moore, Worldwide Director, Purina Interactive, Nestlé Purina PetCare Company

Questions and Answers Q: When you are focusing on a particular design issue and deciding what to do, how do you use your personas in this decision?

A: People in our market research group will explain a particular persona to us and then we evaluate the different techniques against what we know about each persona. We look from the persona's perspective at the situation, rather than looking at the features of the design first. Since people have different goals they want to achieve, we look first at the persona to come up with the content, not come up with the content beforehand.

Q: How do these personas differ from customer profiles that drive offline marketing campaigns?

A: Personas are the same basic profiles as those used offline -- it is the same consumer who communicates in the same way across different available channels. What we add is what activities the persona is looking to do -- their behavioral patterns and where they would expect different things. This focus on real consumer behavior has driven consistency across traditional and new advertising (online).

Q: What is next on the agenda after you have developed the personas? How do you tighten how channels work together?

A: We are still rounding out our understanding of how pets fit into the consumer's life. It is a continual learning and understanding of who these people are and how new media and technology. fits into their lives. It's always what is appropriate for the customer and at what time. You are constantly second-guessing where you think customers are looking for information.

Q: For a company that hasn't started developing personas, do you have any idea of the cost and/or ROI involved in this project?

A: The question of cost is difficult because it depends, for us, on the set of market suppliers. For our company, ROI is more marketing-based since we are not selling a product off of our site. We rely more on changes in attitude and brand -- these are indicative of our personal ROI. The immediate return with many companies is that the process of developing a persona crystallizes business objectives as well as consumer goals.