The Choice of a Persona: An Analysis of Why Stakeholders Choose a Given Persona for a Design Task

Joni Salminen*, Sercan Şengün, João M. Santos, Soon gyo Jung, Lene Nielsen, Bernard Jansen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Although personas have been applied for two decades, not much is known about why a designer chooses a specific persona for a given design task. This question matters because if designers prefer one persona over another, then the needs and attributes of that persona would be favored in the design process, resulting in possible “blind spots” and bias in regards to other personas. To explore reasons and behaviors associated with the choice of a persona, we conduct an on-site user study with 37 participants in a workplace setting focused on a social media content creation task. Our findings show that factors affecting the choice of persona include age similarity between the persona and the designer, persona’s looks, how many users the persona represents, time spent browsing the persona information, and whether the persona is (a)typical relative to other personas. Under different persona sets, these factors were correlated with the probability of a persona being chosen for a design task, and also supported by a qualitative analysis of the think-aloud records where the participants explained their persona choice. The findings provide implications for developing interaction techniques that support users’ varying information needs and persona selection strategies, including recommenders that would increase the match between the designers’ information needs and the available personas.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHCI International 2023 – Late Breaking Papers - 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023, Proceedings
EditorsMasaaki Kurosu, Ayako Hashizume, Aaron Marcus, Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Marcelo M. Soares, Don Harris, Wen-Chin Li, Dylan D. Schmorrow, Cali M. Fidopiastis, Pei-Luen Patrick Rau
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages288-310
Number of pages23
ISBN (Print)9783031480379
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 23 Jul 202328 Jul 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14054 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2023
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period23/07/2328/07/23

Keywords

  • Human factors
  • Personas
  • User choice
  • User study

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