Personas play an essential role in the development of successful products. Without creating profiles of target customers and studying them throughout your product development lifecycle, it's impossible to truly understand user need, context, and pain points. The Essential Persona Lifecycle is an easy-to-reference guide on persona creation, use, and evaluation. Whether you are a student or a UX practitioner, if you are developing products that people are intended to use, this book is for you. *Practical and immediately applicable how-to reference guide for building and using personas - from planning, creating, launching, evaluating, and determining ROI *Invaluable guide that gives you a quick reference for incorporating personas into a product development process *Features all the essential how-to material from its parent book, The Persona Lifecycle, as a quick, at your fingertips companion

If you design and develop products for people, this book is for you. The Persona Lifecycle addresses the how of creating effective personas and using those personas to design products that people love. It doesnt just describe the value of personas; it offers detailed techniques and tools related to planning, creating, communicating, and using personas to create great product designs. Moreover, it provides rich examples, samples, and illustrations to imitate and model. Perhaps most importantly, it positions personas not as a panacea, but as a method used to complement other user-centered design (UCD) techniques including scenario-based design, cognitive walkthroughs and user testing. John Pruitt is the User Research Manager for the Tablet & Mobile PC Division at Microsoft Corporation. Tamara Adlin is a Customer Experience Manager at Amazon.com. For the past six years, John and Tamara have been researching and using personas, leading workshops, and teaching courses at professional conferences and universities. They developed the Persona Lifecycle model to communicate the value and practical application of personas to product design and development professionals.

Usability testing and user experience research typically take place in a controlled lab with small groups. While this type of testing is essential to user experience design, more companies are also looking to test large sample sizes to be able compare data according to specific user populations and see how their experiences differ across user groups. But few usability professionals have experience in setting up these studies, analyzing the data, and presenting it in effective ways.  Online usability testing offers the solution by allowing testers to elicit feedback simultaneously from 1,000s of users. Beyond the Usability Lab offers tried and tested methodologies for conducting online usability studies. It gives practitioners the guidance they need to collect a wealth of data through cost-effective, efficient, and reliable practices. The reader will develop a solid understanding of the capabilities of online usability testing, when it's appropriate to use and not use, and will learn about the various types of online usability testing techniques. *The first guide for conducting large-scale user experience research using the internet *Presents how-to conduct online tests with 1000s of participants - from start to finish *Outlines essential tips for online studies to ensure cost-efficient and reliable results