User Profile

Definition

A user profile is the business (re)engineering requirements work product that documents an individual type of user.

Objectives

The typical objectives of a user profile are to:

• Document the characteristics of an individual type of user.
• Provide the user profile information needed as input into the user analysis document.

Benefits

The typical benefits of a user profile are:

• Only by analyzing the users of the customer organization’s current and planned applications can the:
  • Applications be engineered to provide a positive and effective user experience.
  • Customer organization be reengineered to better support their users.
• User profiles support User Centered Design (UCD).
• User profiles provide a foundation for user analysis.

Contents

The typical contents of a user profile include an appropriate subset of the following:

• User Type Overview:
  
  • Definition (of the user type, job title, or role)
  • User Goals
  • User Responsibilities
  • Absolute Number / Percentage of Users
• Demographics:
  • Location Distribution:
    • Enterprise-internal employees and/or external users.
    • Geographic locations.
    • Environments (e.g., noise or poor lighting).
  • Age Distribution.
  • Gender Ratio.
  • Marital Status.
  • Role Distribution.
  • Likes and Dislikes.
  • Education Level (including subjects studied and major).
  • Occupation (including job title and responsibilities).
  • Income Distribution.
  • Lifestyle.
  • Native Language(s) and Ethnic Background (culture).
  • Buying Habits.
  • Ways of Finding and Choosing Applications/websites (and associated products and services), which is useful for advertising and marketing purposes.
  • Desires, Needs, Fears and Barriers.
  • Expectations and Change Requests.
  • Information Preferences and Ordering (e.g., the preferred order in which to see the content).
  • Disabilities (e.g., vision, hearing, mobility, or cognitive impairments) and Relevant Abilities (e.g., strength).
• Computer Experience:
  • General Computer Experience (e.g., years and frequency of use).
  • Computer Interaction Experience (e.g., Web, GUI, command line, other).
  • Computer Types Used (including peripherals).
  • Monitors Used including size and resolution.
  • Operating Systems Used (including versions).
  • Networks Used (e.g., Internet, intranet, extranet).
  • Browsers Used.
  • Attitude (towards high technology, computers, and application type).
• Application/Product/Service Experience:
  • Total and/or Percentage of Time Used.
  • Frequency of Use.
  • The Platform(s) they use to interface with the application(s).
  • Knowledge of, familiarity with, use of, and attitude (including likes and dislikes about) towards the customer’s and competing brands:
    • Customer Organization’s current applications/websites (and associated products, services, or brand).
    • Applications/websites (and associated products, services, or brand) of the customer’s competitors.
• Appendices:
  • Major Issues
  • TBDs
  • Assumptions

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of a user profile include:

• Producers:
  • Business Strategy Team if done during the business strategy phase.
  • Requirements Team if done during the initiation phase.
• Evaluators:
  • Strategy Inspection Team if done during the business strategy phase.
  • Requirements Inspection Team if done during the initiation phase.
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
• Maintainer:
  • Strategy Inspection Team if produced during the business strategy phase.
  • Requirements Inspection Team if produced during the initiation phase.
  • Not appropriate once incorporated into the user analysis document.
• Users:
  • Business Strategy Team, which uses the user profile to develop the user analysis document.
  • User Experience Team, which uses the user profile to develop the human interfaces.

Phases

A user profile is typically produced during the following phases:

• Business Strategy: Completed
• Business Optimization: Not Applicable
• Initiation: Completed if not previously completed.
• Construction: Completed
• Delivery: Not Applicable
• Usage: Not Applicable
• Retirement: Not Applicable

Preconditions

User profiles typically can be started if the following preconditions hold:

• Either the business strategy phase or the initation phase has started.
• Either the business strategy team or the requirements team has been adequately staffed and trained in user analysis.
• Approved conventions for the user profile exist.

Inputs

The typical inputs to a user profile include the following:

• Work Products:
  • User interview notes
  • User questionnaires and surveys
  • User video video and audio recordings
  • Focus group reports
  • Customer Analysis
  • Market Analysis
• Stakeholders:
  • Usability Domain Experts
  • Marketing Domain Experts

Guidelines

• This informal document is typically developed incrementally and iteratively and in parallel with other documents:
  • User Profiles of other users.
  • User/Task Matrices
  • User Analysis, which summarizes and organizes the information in the user profiles and user/task matrices.
• This is a separate working document for the sake of ease of use and parallel requirements engineering. It is optional in that its contents could be directly inserted into the user analysis document or into a requirements management tool that stores requirements information and thus enables the automatic production of the user analysis document (or even individual user profiles if needed).
• This is an informal document that need not be separately maintained once its contents are incorporated into the user analysis.
• Evaluation and approval may be:
  • Done on a group basis.
  • Optional and instead handled during the evaluation and approval of the associated user analysis document.
• This document should typically produced during the business strategy phase of a business reengineering project However, it may also be either created or updated during the initiation phase of an application development project.

Conventions

User profiles are typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Content and Format Standard
• MS Word Template
• XML DTD
• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Example User Profile