“There’s Something About Noura”: Exploring Think-Aloud Reasonings for Users’ Persona Choice in a Design Task

Sercan Şengün, Joni Salminen, Soon Gyo Jung, Kholoud Khalil Aldous, Bernard J. Jansen

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

Abstract

Stakeholders like designers use personas to learn about users. After persona development, stakeholders are usually presented with a persona set. However, there is little research on how stakeholders select a persona from a persona set. A think-aloud analysis with 37 stakeholders who were asked to select a persona for a content design task reveals that persona selection is infuenced by comparative, non-comparative, and subjective elements. Persona choice is often made with task compatibility in mind: interests, professions, and education were important contextual factors in our focal task. Storifying is commonly applied by stakeholders, refecting personas’ narrative nature. The persona’s picture is often evoked, in addition to nationality and name, though demographics do not play a decisive role. Stakeholders refer to a host of persona attributes when explicating their persona choice. Overall, reasonings for persona choice are multifaceted and individualistic, as we might expect given the information-richness of personas.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
EditorsAnna Vallgarda, Li Jonsson, Jonas Fritsch, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Christopher A. Le Dantec
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages1234-1247
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9798400705830
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2024
Event2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 1 Jul 20245 Jul 2024

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024

Conference

Conference2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period1/07/245/07/24

Keywords

  • design tasks
  • persona choice
  • personas
  • user research

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