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Identify Users with the Bull’s-Eye Canvas

The miller took his donkey to market to sell. People made fun of the miller. The donkey fell in a river and drowned. You don’t want that to happen again, so who do you design for? The miller who owns the donkey? The people who made fun of him? Or the donkey that drowned?

It’s difficult to make the right product decisions if you’re not sure who they’re for. Teams risk building the right features for the wrong users. Help your team identify the right users, so they build the right product for the right people.

Everyone on the team should understand who you’re building for and why. This chapter uses a bull’s-eye canvas to identify a product’s users and agree on who’s important. We’ll look at a formal version of this activity you can use as part of project kickoff or discovery workshops, but the approach works just as well in ad hoc conversations where you want to verify the user before providing feedback.

How User Identification Works

User mapping uses a bull’s-eye canvas to generate users and map them based on how they interact with or are affected by the product (Figure 10-1). The bull’s-eye uses four, concentric circles to organize users by how the product affects them. The center circle represents the product. Users who interact directly with the product go in the second circle. The third circle contains anyone they communicate or collaborate with, and the fourth circle is for anyone else affected by the product. To complete the canvas, the team works through three activities:

• Working together, the team generates a list of direct users (people who will use the product).
• Working together, the team identifies indirect users (people who communicate or collaborate with direct users).
• Working together, the team identifies extended users (people who are affected by the product).

When done, the team will have produced three lists of users:

• A list of direct users to design for
• A list of users affected by the design to keep in consideration
• A list of users to deprioritize

Figure 10-1

Use the bull’s-eye canvas to generate and map users who interact with or are affected by the product

When to Identify Users

Use the bull’s-eye canvas at the start of a project to align the team around the same list of users. The bull’s-eye canvas also works to identify users for journey mapping and flows (Part IV) or interface ideation (Part V).

The bull’s-eye canvas helps teams understand how a product affects users. Usually, team members have an idea of who will use a design. However, like with the team’s other assumptions, there’s a lot of misalignment. Getting everyone on the same page helps the team share the same vision.

Inputs and Quick Starts

Because teams often already have some assumption about who the users will be, the bull’s-eye canvas works well if you start with no inputs. You may also request a list of users or existing personas. Even if the team does not have a documented set of users, you can poll teammates and collect a list of users before you start the activity.

If you’ve previously worked through project goals and future vision, then the team has already mentioned lots of users, especially in the future scenarios that each start with a specific type of user. Use the users from future scenarios to seed discussion.

Materials You’ll Use

Figure 10-2

Product user maps have four parts: the bull’s-eye canvas and three different groups of users

Bull’s-eye canvas

Draw or project the bull’s-eye canvas on a whiteboard or wall or draw the canvas on a piece of paper. Use three or four concentric circles (Figure 10-2).

Users

Users may move around the canvas during discussion. Sticky notes make it easy to add, move, and remove users. However, if using a dry erase board, you can easily write and erase users.

Activity 1: Generate Direct Users

Usually, the people who interact directly with the product are the most important users. In this activity the team will work together to generate a list of people who will use the product.

Often, the team knows who will use the product, and will easily generate a list. If you gathered a list of users as an input, place users on the canvas to kickstart discussion.

The Frame

To frame generation of direct users, say:

“Let’s identify the system’s users, so we can optimize the experience for the right people. We want to list people who will directly interact with the system and its interfaces.”

Facilitate Generation of Direct Users

Ask everyone:

“Who will interact with and use the product?”

The center circle represents the product. As the team lists direct users, capture them in the second circle of the bull’s-eye canvas (Figure 10-3).

If you collected a list of users as inputs to this activity, think aloud while you place them on the canvas and ask the team if they agree with your placements.

Probe for the user’s proper relationship to the product

If participants identify people you believe are not direct users, probe to understand what the users do with the product. Ask what part of the product the user interacts with. Team members may identify unexpected ways users interact with the product. If the user will interact directly with the product, add them to the second circle of the canvas.

It’s also common to identify users affected by the product, either indirectly or in more extended ways. As you discuss and understand how the product affects the user, place the user in the appropriate circle on the canvas.

Figure 10-3

Capture direct users in the second circle of the bull’s-eye

Probe for other users

Teams wear blinders about the product’s users. They focus on one user and ignore others. It’s not that they don’t know about other users. Rather, they’ve prioritized one set of users over others, and it’s not uncommon to focus on the wrong users.

Ask who else will use the product to probe for other users and remove your team’s blinders.

A technical services organization wanted to redesign their website to help procurement managers order more services. Very quickly, they discovered engineers and technicians drove most orders and most traffic to the site. Although procurement managers wrote the checks, the organization wanted to build the site for the wrong users.

Look for any other users, no matter how insignificant they seem. The goal is to generate a wide and comprehensive list of potential users.

When the team doesn’t know the system’s users

For new products or teams, it’s possible you don’t know who the user is. You really can’t go much further. Pivot to create a concrete future vision (see Chapter 7). That alignment will help identify potential product users.

Finish and Move to Indirect Users

When discussion around direct users slows, tell the team you’re ready to focus on indirect users, people who communicate or collaborate with direct users without using the product themselves:

“Let’s move on to the next circle of the canvas and talk about users who talk to or work with the direct users.”

Activity 2: Generate Indirect Users

Teams usually focus on people who interact directly with the product. However, users often communicate and collaborate with other people while they use our products. These indirect users affect the needs of the direct users. So, who do your users talk to and work with?

In this activity, the team works together to generate a list of users who the direct users must talk to or work with.

The Frame

To frame discussion around indirect users, say:

“Now that we know who will use the product, let’s look at who they collaborate with, so we can make it easy for our users to get their jobs done. We want to list anyone our users talk to or work with.”

Facilitate Generation of Indirect Users

Ask everyone:

“Who will our users talk to or work with while they use our product?”

As the team lists indirect users, capture them in the third circle of the bull’s-eye (Figure 10-4).

Probe for connected users

Trigger questions can identify additional indirect users:

• Who do users talk to while using the product?
• Do users share information with anyone?
• Does someone else review or approve what users do or choose?
• Who do your users work with?
• Who do they complain to?
• Who watches them while they use the product?
• Who do they report to?
• Who provides information users need while using the product?

Figure 10-4

Write the indirect users in the third circle of the bull’s-eye canvas

Probe for anti-users

In some cases, users may avoid contact with some people while using the product. You can understand these relationships to optimize the product to either support or prevent this behavior. Ask the team if there is anyone users avoid or hide from while using the product.

Capture anti-users in the third circle of the canvas. Differentiate them from other indirect users with an X next to their name.

Finish and Move to Extended Users

After the team has identified indirect users, it’s time to talk about more extended users:

“Let’s move on to the next circle of the canvas and talk about anyone who might be affected by what direct users do with the product.”

Activity 3: Generate Extended Users

In the fairy tale “Rapunzel,” a witch catches a husband stealing lettuce for his wife. To avoid the witch’s punishment, the husband agrees to give the witch his first child.

In this story, the witch and the husband represent direct users. Each directly participates in agreeing to the bargain. The wife is an indirect user. She doesn’t interact with the agreement, although she interacts with her husband.

Many months later, the wife gives birth to a daughter who the witch collects as payment for stolen lettuce. Rapunzel is the extended user. Although she never stole lettuce, risked a curse, or entered into a witch’s bargain, she spends her youth in a tower letting a witch climb up and down her hair.

Extended users represent people who neither use the product, nor interact with those who do, the direct and indirect users. Despite their distance from the product, they feel its effects. While every design produces unintended consequences, a little foresight reduces unintended, negative consequences.

In this activity, the team works together to generate a list of extended users, people affected by the product.

The Frame

Direct and indirect users provide a solid foundation for your team to think about who else may be affected. Frame discussion to focus on anyone who could be affected by the product or by the direct and indirect users.

To frame discussion around extended users, say:

“We have a good idea about who will use the product, as well as who they talk to and work with. Now let’s look for anyone else who may be affected.”

Facilitate Extended User Generation

Ask everyone:

“Who will our indirect users interact with?”

Capture extended users around the edges of the bull’s-eye (Figure 10-5).

Figure 10-5

Write extended users around the edges of the bull’s-eye

Probe for policies or processes used by indirect users

Many unintended consequences extend not from the product, but from policies, processes, or outcomes triggered by indirect users. Look for prominent indirect users whose day-to-day actions affect large numbers of people. For example, stealing lettuce doesn’t affect Rapunzel. It’s the witch’s policy of requesting first-born children and the father’s policy of agreeing.

Build the Right Product for the Right User

After you identify extended users, the team will have identified an ecosystem of people who will use and be affected by the product. This shared vision of who has a stake in the system will guide and influence ongoing discussions about the product. The bull’s-eye canvas helps teams reflect and consider who is affected by their product decisions.

Once the team has created a shared vision of the user landscape, it’s time to reexamine the team’s initial assumptions about who they will build for. The team will have populated the bull’s-eye canvas with many different user groups.

In the next chapter, we’ll learn how the user profile canvas helps teams understand a user’s tasks, context, influencers, and motivations.