Personas are used in a project to identify different users, usually digging deep into who they are and what they want. Once identified, they can be used to walk through different situations to ensure that their needs are met by the finished product or service.
Although started earlier in the project, we've only just managed to get all of our personas together to cover a range of users of CABmoney. This was achieved by pooling the resources of a number of our advisers who know our client's needs as well as their own.
The full set of personas is available here with expanded profiles, but for the sake of clarity, I've shown a summary of our main eight below.
Although there are a number of differences between the personas, the main thing that connects them, is the level of involvement of both the end user (or client) and the adviser. As we use CABmoney internally to help our advisers actually advise clients (and also for training purposes), the advisers are as much a "user" as our clients are.
We have split our personas into groups based on the amount of involvement of both the clients and the advisers, both of these increase and decrease for different circumstances (with a middle ground of 50:50 involvement from both).
Explorers
Some users will find CABmoney "out in the wild" either through search engines, links, or recommendations. At the far end of our spectrum, these users will be able to get the information they need or be able to complete a Debt Management Plan (DMP) totally independently of us, and we would have no direct contact with them. They will generally be more comfortable with technology and could be based anywhere in the country.
Assisted Users
Some "explorers" may get part way through the DMP and then require assistance, so they would contact us for help, therefore moving along the spectrum into the "assisted user" category.
The more common type of "assisted user" is somebody who access the Citizens Advice service through other means (telephone or pre-COVID face-to-face) and is assisted by an adviser to enter their details onto CABmoney and shown how to use it. Some of these users may then be able to complete the process on their own, or may require further assistance as their circumstances change or if they struggle to work independently.
These users will always be local to our office and benefit from the support of an adviser as and when they need it.
Advisers
The third grouping on the spectrum are Advisers. Some of our advisers use CABmoney as a tool for themselves to help them assist people. As well as helping "assisted users", there will be some clients for whom it wouldn't be suitable to use CABmoney themselves. This would be assessed by an adviser and is usually dependent on how comfortable they are with either technology or managing their own money.
In these cases, the adviser would still use CABmoney, entering the client's details and using it for calculations, producing letters, and keeping track of dates and finances, but the client themselves would have no involvement and likely not even know that CABmoney exists.
Summary
These three different groups highlight different needs and levels of support that would be needed when using CABmoney. Depending on the level of involvement form both client and adviser, different features can be developed to help both whether working together or independently.
The user journeys below highlight how the experience of using CABmoney can be improved for all three groups on the persona spectrum.
