First draft of some UX approaches to TRS work.

1. User Experience view
of the Toledo Region
Story
Keith Instone
keith2010@instone.org

2. About me
• Bowling Green, BGSU, Computer science,
Research
• IBM > CIO > User experience (web focus)
• Here to share my expertise
• Hidden agenda: My kids have an option to live
here when they grow up
• Telecommute for a Globally Integrated Enterprise
• I can do my job from anywhere I want

3. User experience? Huh?
• “All aspects of a product or service as
perceived by users”
• “The sum of a series of interactions” (with
technology, with people via technology)
• Bottom-up: start with (web) user interface
design, then broaden to total experience
• Compare with TRS “brand” - Stories told in
a market

4. The assignment from
Eric
• Do some UX thinking for TRS: baby step
• Target audience: Entrepreneurs
• Business goal: Job creation
• Competition: Dayton, focus on “Dayton
Originals”

5. Common user
experience artifacts
• User model, characteristics
• Stories told from the users point of view (personas, scenarios)
• Experience maps (across touch points)
• User research reports
• Ethnographic, observational
• Usability tests
• Designs
• Evaluations and recommendations

6. Simple model (that is wrong) but can further the discussion about users & goals
Educational system
Local Local Reason for visit
asset asset Tourists
Things to do
Local Local
asset asset Contribute to Employment opportunities One criteria Meeting planners
Main criteria
Family
Local Local Hotel rates
asset asset
Etc. Conference facilities
Local Local Travel logistics
asset asset
Aspects of Etc.
Quality of Life Residents
Select a region
based on
Employ
Create
Entrepreneurs Companies
Locate
Site selectors

7. Business goals for job
creation
• Talent attraction: Convincing certain types
of people to live here
• Talent retention: Keeping certain types of
people here
• Talent growth: Helping people become the
type of person we are targeting
★Target person = Entrepreneur

8. User goals
• High quality of life
• Work life balance? (that “perfect state of
balance”?)
• needs lots more help here...

9. Hey, it is all about story
telling, right?*
• (Attract) Joe, engineering wiz in Texas, is starting up an advanced energy
company, looking for the best place to locate his company, willing to move
his family to the right place...
• (Retain) Mary, employed at HCR Manor Care, has some ideas for a new
Internet start-up for the healthcare industry, wondering who else around
here she can talk with about her ideas, ...
• (Grow) Frank, new UT grad, has a dream is to start up a local company, but
he is not sure how to get started...
*That is, we can also use story telling from a user’s point of view to help us make the regional brand come to life

10. WWDD?
• Dayton Patented. Originals wanted. - http://www.daytonoriginals.org/
• Telling stories of creative thinkers, does, achievers
• What makes Dayton unique, its local assets (companies, products,
people)
• These testimonials help demonstrate the appeal Dayton offers for
innovative people and businesses, while illustrating the contributions that
"Dayton Originals" are making in our community today.
• Brand: City as a place of imagination and innovation

12. My reaction
• Seems like a start, in the right direction: Collecting
the stories
• I am missing the bigger picture: how to use these
stories to satisfy specific user goals
• Could not find enough to create / try out specific
scenarios (easily)
• Could not find any “Dayton Economic
Development” connections to Dayton Originals yet

13. Basic usability / bug / label had
an impact on my experience

14. Other Dayton pieces not connected
“Un-original” - never mentions it on this page
Mentions many qualities of the region, but “place of
imagination and innovation” not any of them
You cannot get to
“Hometown heros” sounds like Originals Originals from here, tho
but it is different
4 different sites, 4 different visual expressions of brands, none even close to “Dayton Originals” in story, style, words or images

15. Possible next steps
• Better “user model” - much better
• Better scenarios for talent acquisition, retention, growth
• RGP and other experts who do this every day
• Interviews with target audience (Ugly Data, Sdudi, etc.) on specifics of
the regional brand story
• “Play out” the scenarios more, document, present
• Good activity for local agencies, gets them involved and starts them
thinking about the application of the brand (plus, I do not have enough
time to do it well)
• What else?