Information security application design: Understanding your users

Abstract

The basis of Human-Centered Design is the understanding of users’ goals and needs. One way to empathize with users is to create Personas. Yet, traditional methods of creating Personas are time-consuming. In this work, members of the Rapid7 User Experience team illustrate how they have quickly created Personas using the Proto-Persona method. The method, which encapsulates a collective set of beliefs that an organization has about their users, enabled our organization to capture stories of 80 characters. Refining these during the process, resulted in 16 Proto-Personas, which were visualized within a Persona Ecosystem. This Ecosystem, and the Personas within, has allowed Rapid7 to design the right Information Security applications for the right users at the right time.