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Methodology

The CTS-Personas project represents a first step in creating robust profiles of the many roles in the translational workforce. The twelve roles profiled, however, are only a beginning. We encourage anyone with an interest in translational personas to examine our methodology, create new profiles, and provide us with feedback about improvements and best practices in the personas creation process.

Step 1: Elements in a well-defined Persona

Personas have existed as a software development tool for fifteen years, and within that time several approaches have been developed for adequately defining and fleshing out a persona profile. From Usability.gov, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and UX Magazine, the CTS-Personas team referenced several ‘traditional’ persona profiles that contained elements such as a photograph of the fictional, profiled person, a name, a biographical sketch, and listings of their motivations, goals, experience, knowledge, and pain points. The team was also inspired by a similar profile layout produced by the Collections as Data project funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The personal attributes such as the photo, name, and quote help to reinforce that the Persona profiles represent real people working in CTS, with real motivations and needs. Though created from amalgamated data, a realistic persona profile makes the persona’s needs real and urgent to the developer or educational resource creator who creates tools to serve them.

Building on these existing frameworks, the Personas team added elements related to the scholarly output activities of members of the CTS workforce, as well as their continuing education goals and needs. Scholarly outputs in the form of peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations and posters are key outputs for many in the translational workforce, with important implications for productivity, funding, and career success. Educational needs and goals of the CTS workforce are of critical importance to CTSA sites and numerous resources that serve them, such as the Educational Landscape Project of the CD2H and the Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC), the coordinating center for the CTSA program. CLIC provides collaboration tools for all CTSA program hubs to foster educational efforts for team science, among many other initiatives. Knowledge of the scholarly outputs and the continuing education needs of the profiled CTS roles in Personas therefore supports numerous initiatives within the ecosystem of clinical research support organizations.

With these inspirations in mind, the Personas team honed in on 15 elements to be included in the final, robust persona 1-page profiles:

• Name
• Photo
• Quote
• Descriptive Job Title
• Major responsibilities (Incorporated in a “Bio” section)
• Expertise: training, years on job, etc.
• Workplace environment (Incorporated in a “Bio” section)
• Software and data use at work
• Technology attitude
• Motivators
• Goals
• Wants/Needs
• Pain points/Challenges
• Scholarly output activities
• Continuing Education Goals/Training Opportunities

Step 2: Literature Review

A thorough review of the literature on a role to be profiled is essential. The CTS-Personas team reviewed CTSA organization charts and staff pages, job descriptions, Web resources, scholarly publications, and additional research outputs related to the roles.

Step 3: Interviews

Sources like the European Bioinformatics Institute and UX Magazine agree that interviews with living exemplars of your roles are the best way to create persona profiles that are authentic and reliable. Data provided by real people will help dispel any assumptions or misconceptions that your team may be formulating about certain roles. For greatest ease of data collection, audio-record your interviews and transcribe them using a service that ensures confidentiality, data integrity, and secure file transfer.

When conducting interviews at a CTSA site, it is highly likely that you will need to complete an IRB review. Allow time for review completion before beginning the interview process.

Before beginning individual interviews, provide your interviewees with a consent form containing the interview questions. The questions provided below were developed by the CTS-Personas team specifically to address the elements of an effective translational persona profile outlined above:

1. What is your job title?
2. Please provide a little background on your job.
3. What projects might you work on during a typical day?
4. How long have you been working in this capacity?
5. Did you train for this specific job? What is your educational path?
6. Please provide some information about your field of work and your role in it.
7. Describe a typical work day.
8. How and where do you do a certain task? How long does it take? What do you do next?
9. What activities take up most of your time (Follow up: From 0 - 10, what is the frequency with which this task occurs in a given week?)
10. What activities are most important to your success (as you define success)?
11. Of the things you do during a typical workday, are any of those processes or tasks mandated by your industry/hospital/lab/office/etc?
12. What was your most exciting project?
13. What was your most challenging project?
14. What about your work environment either helps or hinders you in these tasks?
15. What software and data tools do you use on a daily basis?
16. What did you feel, what went on in your head, the last time (insert software tool from #15) didn’t work?
17. How would you describe your relationship with technology? (E.g., proficient in many, some, or few applications. Are these general technology applications or role-specific? Does your proficiency level differ between general applications and work-related ones?)
18. What do you like most about your work? What would you change?
19. What goals are you working toward at the moment?
20. Are these your goals or team goals? If these are different, please explain how
21. What blocks you from completing your goals?
22. After a typical day, what about your job (if anything) is still on your mind?
23. What professional groups, blogs, publications, and social media networks do you pay most attention to?
24. What are your most common scholarly outputs? (E.g., articles, conference materials, classes, etc.)
25. Does your department support you in taking continuing education or furthering your training in some way? If so, would you like to share which classes you are taking? Are you working towards a goal in your continuing education?

Step 4: Create the Profile

Keep your audience’s needs in mind when writing and formatting the final profile document. Profiles can take many different forms, as seen from example templates from Usability.gov, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and the IMLS’s Collections as Data project. Feel free to re-use CTS-Personas’ template, as well as the elements and interview questions from the project.

Step 5: Best Practices

The CTS-Personas team is eager to learn about your suggestions for making persona profiles better! Submit feedback on our main GitHub site

For additional advice and best practices on persona creation from the world of user experience design (UX), where personas originated, as well as Usability.gov, please see the following sources:

Anvari, F., Richards, D., Hitchens, M., Ali Babar, M., Thi Tran, H. M., Busch, P.. “An empirical investigation of the influence of persona with personality traits on conceptual design.” Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 134. 2017. Pages 324-339, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121217302078

Cao, Jerry. “The UX Designer’s 5-Minute Guide to Lean Personas. 19 September 2016. UXPin. Updated 22 July 2019. https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/ux-designers-5-minute-guide-lean-personas/

Cooper, Alan. 2004. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and how to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition). Pearson Higher Education.

“How to conduct user interviews.” Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-conduct-user-interviews

“How to create Personas, a step by step guide.” Talebook. UXPlanet. 19 August 2018. https://uxplanet.org/how-to-create-personas-step-by-step-guide-303d7b0d81b4

Natoli, Joe. “How to create user personas that deliver real value.” UXMastery. 13 June 2016. https://uxmastery.com/personas-that-deliver-real-value/

Natoli, Joe. Natoli User Persona Empathy Worksheet. Give Good UX. 11 June 2014. https://www.givegoodux.com/creating-better-user-personas-tips-templates/natoli-persona-empathy-situation-worksheet/

“Personas”. How-to and Tools section. Usability.gov: Improving the User Experience..
Form Approved OMB# 0990-0379 Exp. Date 9/30/2020 https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html