VANESSA ERICKSON
Design Manager
CREATIVE PROCESS
Creating Character Personas
USAA Virtual Agent Persona
At USAA, we have high level tone attributes which we employ in our Virtual Agent. We are to always be warm, energetic, genuine, and grounded.
The primary research we conducted has informed us that our membership (regardless of demographics) expects us to always use a professional tone, to not use slang or emojis, and help them solve their problems while providing accountability. Given the bot's level of capabilities at the time, content creation, maturation of the bot positioning and infrastructure took priority over crafting unique voices for different user groups. That being said, you’ll see my portfolio reflects this focus on delivering plain language, warm, and genuine interactions.
I’ve also asked the question, what if a bot was mature enough and had most answers?
Playing in the Realm of Persona Possibilities
When I was thinking about how different people deal with their money, it immediately reminded me of this book I read called The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. She conducted analysis on personality types and how people respond to outer and inner expectations.
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Depending on a person’s response to outer and inner expectations, that person falls into one of four distinct types:
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UPHOLDERS: "Discipline is my freedom"
responds readily to both outer and inner expectations​
02
QUESTIONERS: "I’ll comply - if you convince me why"
questions all expectations; they meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified, so in effect they respond only to inner expectations
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OBLIGERS: "You can count on me, and I’m counting on you to count on me"
responds readily to outer expectations but struggles to meet inner expectations
04
REBELS: "You can’t make me, and neither can I”
resists all expectations, outer and inner alike *
*Reference: Rubin, G. (2017). The four tendencies: The indispensable personality profiles that reveal how to make your life better (and other people’s lives better, too). Harmony Books. P.6, 25, 59, 99, 153)
Granted, there are many ways to approach persona, tone, and character development. Any exploration in this realm should be tested with specific audiences and customer behavioral profiles to determine what works for each. I am not suggesting this is the end all be all, but this is a baby step into divergent thinking as to how one could approach the topic. This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure to start exploring the possible for personas without it being a 2030 initiative. Even the tip of the iceberg has got me excited!
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My initial thoughts are wow, if it’s known that there are these distinct types of people and how they respond to inner and outer expectations, how could that be used to let users decide which type of assistive personality would best help them achieve their financial goals?
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Giving people the flexibility to determine how they want a company to interact with them to help them get where they need to go financially could be the key to getting real buy in from the customer-base.
THE OBLIGER
If you’re dealing with an obliger, and they are “the biggest group” (Rubin, G., p.103), they readily meet outer expectations. We could create a virtual personality type that asks them to take care of certain things to help them achieve a goal they have for themselves. It’s hard for obligers to meet their own inner expectations, so let’s say they want to establish at least $1,000 balance in their savings account (because many studies show a large amount of people cannot come up with $500-$1000 quickly if an emergency were to occur). Through some interview process, behavioral analysis, or just plain self selection from options, people could interact with a unique system that reminds them they are accountable to achieving that goal. Perhaps we can send them reminders like:
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Hi Judith. It looks like you recently got paid and you haven’t contributed towards your savings goal. Do you want to transfer $20 to your savings account to knock this out now?
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THE QUESTIONER
For a questioner, they are going to need a choice and rationale for making that same decision.
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Hi Judith. It looks like you recently got paid and you haven’t contributed towards your savings goal. If you transfer $20 to savings now, you’ll hardly know it’s been stashed away. The longer you wait, the more likely you are to use the money on something else and delay meeting your savings goal. Do you want to transfer $20 to your savings account now?